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Aviation Continuation Pay (ACP - The Bonus)


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The big "IF" to always consider too is will an individual honestly be willing to do this job until 55?

I’m not sure why you keep talking about 55. A common misconception about GS retirement is the amount of time you have to serve. After 5 years you’re vested and can collect retirement when you’re 60/62. Even if you worked when you were 20-25. Obviously it wouldn’t be worth much. But if you’ve bought back 12 years of military service, now you’re looking at a 17 year retirement check. For 5 years of work. Just like the military, every year is worth more. And if you hit 20 or 30 years then there are some additional benefits. But 5 years is all you need.


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Valid, but the "I'm making shitloads of money with two retirements!" isn't going to happen if you're not going to 55 or near there.  If you punch at 12, you still have to make up 8 years somewhere to get the AD retirement, then you still have to work enough GS time to be "worth it." So essentially you have to put in 13 more years (8 AGR+5 GS) to get both, and that 5 GS isn't going to be that much retirement, or at least not worth it for most people to do 25 years of total service.  If you're a guy who wants to do 20 and go to airlines or other similar paying job, that 20-25 year period of service is going to be nowhere close to making up for your lost earning potential outside of government work.  If your intrinsic value of service is worth enough to stomach an "extra" 5-10 years of GS time (i.e. 25-30 years of service), then more power to you, but that doesn't seem to apply to the majority of people.

I think the GS thing can work for some people, but its an entirely different animal than most people first realize (myself included). I'm not a "bail to the airlines ASAP" guy, but after getting more insight into it, and having been a GS for the last 1+ years, its not nearly what its cracked up to be for many reasons. I'm not saying guys are idiots for going that path, but there's a reason many of us are only looking at AGR options for long term (GS is fine for a short period). I have a lot of friends +/- a couple years of my year group, and I don't know any that are planning on long term GS for retirement purposes.

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I'm a career AGR and there's no fucking way I'd take an ART job, even though I'm not an airline bound guy. Put simply, the 2.5% multiplier of an Active duty year is worth a hell of a lot more than the bullshit 1% FERS multiplier. Another thing people are missing, the FERS retirement for new hires since oh 2014, requires a yearly vesting fee of 4.4%!!! compared to goose egg for the military retirement. The FEHB offering is also expensive compared to Tricare. ART Pay is also 100% taxable vice AGR. It's just not anywhere near parity. The ART job nickle and dimes your paycheck to death, for a lower multiplier retirement.

The value of buying back AD time is diluted when you consider you gotta wait until 50-whatever to collect the Reserve one to give you parity with the AD one, and you still have to do 5 physical years, you just can't buy back and call it time served. Nevermind you're doing so to shift down from 2.5% to 1% per creditable year. Maybe if they extended ARTs the fedral LEO multiplier you'd have a deal. Alas, nothing. 

If I knock out an active duty retirement in my late 40s (in my case) you'd have to make up that entire disbursement over 15 years, compared to me going and doing something else with my life and getting a monthly retainer check for waking up in the morning. And that's the problem with the ART calculus: It assumes you'd have no other option than doing the exact same shit you're doing right now, which just isn't the case for most dudes. Even if you know you're gonna hold on to this job until they kick you out at 57-60, you'd still be better off doing 20 AD in the AGR program and then mulling over if you want to continue as an ART for 5 years or whatever you need to tide you over. But that only works if you hussle all the way to fully vested retirement. If you stop short of that as an ART (the whole "it's only 5 years" vesting premise), you would have been better off getting an AD retirement, collecting a check immediately, and done something else with your life....

..and the reason is that put simply: I don't need half a mil at 80, I need that money today so I can have a life while I'm young and active. Check of the month club in my 40s and 50s allows me the flexibility to reinvent myself without concern for the initial paycut. That's gonna be a different and personal answer for everybody. If you know for a fact there's nothing else you'd rather do between now and 60, go ART and have a nut. I don't have that kind of certainty in my life, certainly not anymore.

For me it's all about that Time value of money homey, and I'm not just talking about compounding. Youth has a $$$ equivalent to me. Lower but earlier disbursement is more valuable to me than later/higher. I can guarantee myself today, tomorrow is not owed to me. That math is really not complicated.

It matters not though. In AFRC the manning picture tells the tale. The ART program was 55% manned last time I gave a crap and looked at it. That was immediately followed by the retrofit ART-to-AGR restoration, which is why ARPC has been sucking hind teet on the personnel management/order cutting front for the last 3 FYs. Proof is in the pudding, the rank and file overwhelmingly favors the AGR. Even with it, manning on the full time side is not anywhere near 100%. So Occam's Razor. I digress. 

 

Edited by hindsight2020
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Those are all good points, and I was just pointing out that you can get more from moving to GS with less time than some folks realize. But nothing compares to the check of the month club. That’s why when I got un-RIF’d three years ago I chose coming back to active duty to finish out rather than continue as a GS and IMA, even knowing that I was unlikely to make O-5. The math worked out heavily in favor of that path. If there were more potential AGR opportunities for a guy like me (test nav), the calculus likely would have been different.


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On 10/7/2018 at 5:39 PM, Ash said:

Any of these opportunities giving up title 10 orders to get a guy to an AD retirement?

As others have said already, yes they can.  If you want a staff gig right now it's likely yours.  Ping your OG, I'm guessing they are getting plenty of emails with opportunities.  If your state partner nation is a good country, the BAO gig is one of the best kept secrets out there.

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6 hours ago, SocialD said:

As others have said already, yes they can.  If you want a staff gig right now it's likely yours.  Ping your OG, I'm guessing they are getting plenty of emails with opportunities.  If your state partner nation is a good country, the BAO gig is one of the best kept secrets out there.

BAO?

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Gonna take a wild guess and say he probably meant FAO?


No, he meant BAO-Bilateral Affairs Officer. It’s an SPP position and it’s awesome. Similar to FAO, but doesn’t have all of the training requirements. I was one for 2 years from 2008-2010. One of the coolest things I’ve ever done. I had an office in the Embassy and an office in the Ministry of Defense. I travelled thru out the country and it rocked. Met my wife, who was also working in the Embassy. Can’t say enough good things about being a BAO.


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9 hours ago, herkbier said:

BAO?

What Herkbum said, and for clarification, SPP = state partnership for peace (google it).  Of course it's highly dependent upon what country your state is partnered with, on whether it's a good deal or not.  Ours happens to be in one of my favorite cities in Eastern Europe.  If I hadn't got hired at the airlines when I did, I would have been lobbying hard for that gig.  As always timing is key.  

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What Herkbum said, and for clarification, SPP = state partnership for peace (google it).  Of course it's highly dependent upon what country your state is partnered with, on whether it's a good deal or not.  Ours happens to be in one of my favorite cities in Eastern Europe.  If I hadn't got hired at the airlines when I did, I would have been lobbying hard for that gig.  As always timing is key.  


We are Eastern Europe as well, NATO and EU members. And actually SPP=State Partnership Program. The Peace part went away in the 90s. New focus and most recent additions have been in Africa. Have fun with that.


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3 hours ago, sling-it-17 said:

Haven’t checked myPers in a while, but does anyone have intel on when the 19’ bonus is dropping? As i understand it no changes from last year but one would like to think it would drop sooner due to the NDSA is already signed. Crazy talk i know!

They'll get 9 more months out of you if they wait until July.

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Hopefully they bump up what the offer to 11Ms, up to the $35k they are authorized to, instead of the $30k they offered last year. It'll be interesting to see what they end up offering, but I'm not holding my breath for info anytime soon.

Also curious about the rumored professional pay, and how talking the bonus this year would affect flight pay/professional pay if they change it in the future.

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On 10/14/2018 at 4:27 PM, jazzdude said:

Also curious about the rumored professional pay, and how talking the bonus this year would affect flight pay/professional pay if they change it in the future.
 

 

Quite frankly, HAF needs to get off its ass and start throwing money at the problem.

Pilot losses are starting to go exponential. We had a net loss of 124 pilots in FY17...in FY18 we had a net loss of 227 pilots...that’s almost double the amount walking out the door in a single year.

All the flowery speeches and Aircrew Retention Task Force efforts on QoL improvements have  utterly failed.

Why not at least try solving (or at least easing) the problem with money? 

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I’ve never understood the “it’s not about the money” argument. 

A 6 month deployment is way more tolerable when you’re making 250+ a year.  So are alllll the other problems everyone complains about. Same with the wife’s problems....

Close the pay gap with the airlines and you keep a BUNCH of pilots. But couple the known aircrew issues with literally half the pay of a 3rd year airline dude/dudette and the AF doesn’t have a chance. Not sure why this is so hard. 

Edited by pilotguy
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7 minutes ago, pilotguy said:

I’ve never understood the “it’s not about the money” argument. 

A 6 month deployment is way more tolerable when you’re making 250 a year.  So are alllll the other problems everyone complains about. Same with the wife’s problems

I can totally understand the "it's not about the money" argument, even though I don't believe many are saying it.

If someone wants something out of life that the Air Force cannot give them (e.g. control, freedom, location, accommodation of family special needs, etc.), they may not be willing to compromise merely for more money. There are some things you can't pay certain people to tolerate.

The vast majority of people I know who have left/are leaving the AF say "It's not only about the money."

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5 hours ago, torqued said:

I can totally understand the "it's not about the money" argument, even though I don't believe many are saying it.

If someone wants something out of life that the Air Force cannot give them (e.g. control, freedom, location, accommodation of family special needs, etc.), they may not be willing to compromise merely for more money. There are some things you can't pay certain people to tolerate.

The vast majority of people I know who have left/are leaving the AF say "It's not only about the money."

There's a big gap between "it's not about the money" and "it's not ONLY about the money".

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From what I’ve seen, “It’s not about the money” argument is from people that think the AF can change the toxic $hit show it’s become. The argument of “show me the money” is typically from the people that want airline pay to put up with the BS.

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On ‎10‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 8:19 PM, Sprkt69 said:

From what I’ve seen, “It’s not about the money” argument is from people that think the AF can change the toxic $hit show it’s become. The argument of “show me the money” is typically from the people that want airline pay to put up with the BS.

It's definitely an interesting point of view, and I'd hazard to guess that if a guy was getting paid $250k to fly fighters there'd be less of a pilot shortage. Just my 2 cents.

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It’s simple for me...

As it stands I’m 100% getting out when my time is up

If I could make 250K (approx year 3 money at an airline) in the AF I’m 100% staying in.

No, the problems don’t go away, they just can be overlooked if my time is valued properly monetarily.

Id venture to guess that most people would feel the same way. 

 

 

Edited by pilotguy
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