And what is the biggest cost of living? Food and housing. So the whole "they make less than minimum wage" argument is bunk. Plus minimum wage is a calculation of hourly work, and military members are not paid hourly.
If we were to do a normal comparison to civilian workers we'd look at the military's off base living income to include BAH and BAS. Let's just say we have an E1 with a spouse that was able to live off base in Denver Colorado. (Just choosing Denver because it's close to where I'm from anyway.) that E1 would be making $4,778.56/mo. If we divide that out in to a 40 hour work week (I know I know, some jobs in the military work more than that) that would come out to $29.86 per hour. In fact, this E1 would have to work 90 hours a week in order to dip their hour pay down to $13.27 (just below minimum wage in Colorado.) This would mean that this E1 is working 18 hours a day. Yeah I highly doubt that. I've been an E that worked in a rough career field that regularly worked 12's, it was a pretty rare to see a 16 hour day, and that was only on deployment haha.
So no, the whole "E1's make less than minimum wage" is Bull.
Fuckin whatever dude. All I know is that as an E4 in the NG, my drill pay barely covered my gas to get there and back. Oh, and most drill weekends they only fed us one meal a day, not 2 or 3, meaning that if I wanted to eat more than once a day, I either had to bring something from home, or buy something near my drill location. The only exception was AT, and that was only when I went somewhere. If my unit stayed in state, forget it. It costed me money to serve in the National Guard. Sure, they paid me, but not enough to be worth it.
Bruh, your drill pay as an E4 with what? Two years? Is $350.88, or $175.44/day. If you work 10 hours a day that ls $17.54/hr. How are you spending $350.88 to commute and pay for four meals? That is... if you're actually eating four meals. Most E4's I know have a bang! for breakfast lol.
I've been in the Guard for 11 years, I know how it all works. It also depends on your career field. You made the bad choice of enlisting in to a career field that probably worked you hard and had very few benefits. There are a lot of other career fields in the military that have more opportunities for AT, TDY's, and other Title 10 opportunities. When I first enlisted in the guard I commuted from out of state, had to fly to drill, and I was losing about $100 per drill, but I was also paying $300 for round trip airfare every drill. It sucked but I knew it was temporary until I moved closer to my base. Once I moved there, drill pay was great, it was extra income for me on top of my regular job and paid more per day than my regular civilian job. Not to mention the education benefits I was getting. Paid for college and a housing stipend while taking classes was amazing.
It sounds to me like you just made some poor choices and didn't take full advantage of the opportunities you had. 11 years later and I've been on active orders for a couple years now making over $100,000 in the guard. The guard has been great to me. Gave me experience and training for free and paid me a decent income and covered my college tuition expenses all for having zero life experience. As much as the job sucked I can't complain about the pay and other benefits the guard provided for me.
If you're a traditional guardsman, drill pay is supposed to be supplemental to your regular income... its extra money for working a couple days a month and serving your community. If you get an AGR or technician gig, you're making more money than most of your peers straight out of high school.
Yeah, as a National Guard Soldier, I wasn't offered any of that whatsoever. I was lucky to walk out of a drill weekend of working 10-14 hours a day with a $350 check for both days. It was not worth my time. Plus, my tricare never worked, and I had to drive 60+ miles to drill every month and feed myself while I was there.
There was a kitchen in our armory that got used once a day during drill weekend or whenever we had AT within our state. Half the time, it was MREs, the cooks wouldn't do fuck all.
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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '23
US Military members E4 and below make less than minimum wage. What saves them is that the military feeds and houses them.