Active Military Driving $80K+ cars?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The pay is more than you think and the benefits off-set expenses

Our family take home pay after taxes and TSP is $20K/month. One military and one civilian with similar take home pay.

We have lower expenses with miitary benefits
- subsidized day care (only $500/kid when we used it)
- student loan forgiveness ($100K of student loans forgiven)
- Defined benefit retirement with no employee contribution (will be about $90K/year)
-GI Bill transfer to dependants for college expenses and instate tuition

We drive nicer cars, but so not pay private school tuition - opted for the expensive house in a good school cluster

A lot of these perks are newer as my spouse never got loan forgiveness, defined benefit or GI bill. He had a different kind of education plan and could have paid into the GI bill but couldn't afford it at the time.

Getting a subsidized day care spot is very difficult depending on your job.

I accepted my commission in 2004, tranferred my GI Bill in 2010, and loans were forgiven in 2018. I never had an issue getting dod day care - all three of my kids attended

You were fortunate. And, newer to the military.

We were on 4 wait lists for years at local bases and never got a spot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op checking back in. FWIW the three families I am referring to have 2, 3 and 3 kids respectively, and the parents are around 40yrs old. So I assume they are higher ranking officers with years of military experience. One sometimes comes to school in what appears to be a flight suit type uniform.

One has a spouse that is a teacher, another has a HR type role for a Fed agency, the third I have no idea. I genuinely have no clue what officers make, I clearly don't know their family or personal financial situation. And those details are none of my business. It just surprised me to see the only military parents in my kids classes all driving such expensive vehicles. I didn't know if they got free or subsidized housing, which would be huge. Or that maybe officer can make more than I would have guessed. The only ~$40yo parents (not young people or singles) we know with multiple kids that drive $100K cars are lawyers or doctors So our perspective is clearly bias.

If they are in a flight suit they are higher level officers and probably doing very well. They also probably get special duty pay.

Also, a higher level officer with kids in this area gets just under 4k a month in base allocated housing allowance to put toward their housing costs. That's on top of pay. You can see how the higher level officer plus GS-14 wife couple would be doing fine.

[Anonymous]

The officers I know in this area come from UMC families, went to schools like UVA (or similar), and have professional spouses with good jobs who they met in college.

[Anonymous]

Probably bought them used

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Family money
Spouse has a high income

Also, many active military claim residence in FL and the like, and pay no property taxes

This but officers can make good money. They get a lot for a housing allowance on top of pay.

They also have far less expenses, too, in general. Besides housing, they typically will not spend as much on medical, state income tax, college savings (GI bill plus in-state in their state of residence), retirement, and a whole lot more.

This is, of course, even more true for dual-military families, especially dual-officer.

Also no educational debt.

And throw in lower costs for resources available on base — from seriously lower prices on groceries, shopping at exchanges, recreational opportunities…. It adds up nicely.

[Anonymous]

Also when you move, they pay for you to ship one car (unless dual military, then two) so a lot of military families have one really nice car lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also when you move, they pay for you to ship one car (unless dual military, then two) so a lot of military families have one really nice car lol

Those with a sense of humor let uncle sam pay for s*&t boxes to get shipped to and from Europe. You can also make some money shipping a new nice care to Hawaii and then selling it.

[Anonymous]

Living above means

Lease the car, rent house in lcol area

Blew all their hazard pay money.

Family money

[Anonymous]

There are a lot of dudes in the military that simply have their brains screwed in differently than common folk. I mean that's why they're in the military in the first place. You can see many ahole BMW drivers on the road that are overwhelmingly in the military. When we first moved to this area we lived in apartments that were only $1700 per mo. And there were so many bmws, audis, etc parked in the garage with out of state tags they were almost always military people. It's a whole bunch of alpha males below the age of 28 with no kids, and often times very few bills because they get food and housing often paid for, or minimal amounts of bills even if they live off base due to no student loans. They absolutely live for today and abide by the creed of living fast and die young. Heck, even if you can't afford expensive cars, you can still lease them. You gotta project that alpha #1 image.....lmao OK bro. We all know how much you make. It's publicly available information. You are basically living in the box your Mercedes or BMW came in because you want to project an image.

[Anonymous]

I know very little about the military. I sold a house to a military family and they got a very low interest rate, zero down, and they didn’t even have to put any money down at all for closing for closing costs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Running joke in military circles actually. Many, many have cars above means.

Also, veterans get preferences for fed jobs. So what they typically do is get a fed job after leaving the military. Once their clearance is processed and they start their new job, they will talk to other vets who are collecting 40k/yr in disability. And they will inevitably apply for disability due to their "PTSD" despite never having seen a second of actual combat.

Ok there, Skippy.

Carrying around a lot of weird baggage about veterans… none of which was even remotely relevant to the thread.

Good job, good effort.

They pay for the Raptor with disability payments. Do you now understand meathead?

Bro, I can smell your insecurity and self-loathing from here.

You consider yourself bright, but you know your post was a poorly reasoned nonsequitur and it’s eating you alive. Your snappy little addendum here doesn’t help… “40k/yr in disability” (your words) funding a bunch of trucks that start at $80,000? Sure, that is clearly the correct explanation.

Next time sketch it out on your chalkboard first.

[Anonymous]

I posted a thread on a similar topic here. "what HHI is needed to buy luxury SUV" or something down these lines. It's not just military, but there are tons of nice vehicles driven around that you may feel like everyone has loads of disposable income. Prices went up and as much as I love to buy one I cannot justify spending 60K on a car (and that's lower end). For us it's a LOT of money for a car and we aren't DCUM poor.

[Anonymous]

Military doctors moonlight like crazy—we knew one who would read x-rays during his downtime in Iraq while deployed, another who would fly to one of the Dakotas on weekends to cover at a hospital there. That’s where they make the real money.

[Anonymous]

You can be a physician or lawyer and be active duty.

They get LOTS of benefits, like crazy generous housing allowances.

The poor military people are the enlisted (lower echelon) service members. That is probably not who you were seeing,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know very little about the military. I sold a house to a military family and they got a very low interest rate, zero down, and they didn’t even have to put any money down at all for closing for closing costs.

It’s called a VA loan and yes, it’s a big perk for the military. Rates not usually lower than normal, though.