 So it's just her $500 a month. And you're saying like individual playing through the reserves, 50 bucks. We're spending 10 times that much money. And on top of that. I'm Sergeant Marcus Walker. I'm the Air Force Reserve Recruiter. I'm located out here in more Oklahoma, which is about 10 minutes south of Oklahoma City. I'm originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but I grew up in El Paso, Texas, just by being an Army brat. I originally entered the Air Force in 2010, came in as security forces, but was able to get a secondary tech school to be a Academy structure. Started out in Dover and Delaware, then transferred out to Pope Air Force Base out there at Fort Bragg. And then transferred out to Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Atlanta, Georgia. And then now I'm up here at Tinker Air Force Base as my fourth location. If you want to get in contact with me, I have Facebook, Air Force Reserve, more slash Midwest City. And then for my Instagram, it's Air Force Reserve, Oklahoma. And then I have the Twitter page, which is Air Force Reserve Staff Sergeant Marcus Walker. What is the pay like in the reserves? This is the biggest question people want to know. So as the reserves, you're going to look at two different types of pay. You're going to have your drill pay doing your one week in a month. And that's going to vary off of your rank from E1 to E4, E5, it depends. At minimum, you're looking at close to 250 for a 16 hour drill weekend. And then as well, the second pay is going to be your active duty pay. So basic training, tech school, anytime you're activated on title 10 orders, your annual tour, your seasonal training program, you're going to be receiving active duty pay. And so that can range from, I want to say at minimum 2,000, but then as well, you're going to get your basic housing allowance while you're on title 10 orders. You're literally going to get all your active duty pay. So your basic allowance for subsidized, your basic allowance for housing, and then you'll get your base pay. And then if you're married or have the pennants, your basic housing allowance is going to be a lot higher than someone who doesn't have any kids. And if you were separated for more than 30 days, you would get family separation pay as well, wouldn't you? I believe so. That's nice. That's good to know, especially like tech school like that, BMT and tech school timeframe, you're making active duty pay that whole time basically. So is the pay the same for guard and reserves? Just the traditional one weekend a month aspect of guard and reserves. Is it the same pay? The pay is exactly the same. How often do you get paid? So if you're working that one weekend a month, when does that paycheck come to you? Probably a week and a half after that drill date. So for example, this weekend is a drill weekend. So May 1st, May 2nd, you complete your drill, you're probably gonna get paid that week of, was it May, that May 10th week, is probably when you're gonna receive your drill pay. I know you had mentioned in our other interview that we had done, if you guys haven't seen that, you can check it out in the link down below in the description. But does the Air Force reserves offer healthcare? Yes. So we have the, it's not mandatory, it is an option, it's called the TriCare Reserve. So for anyone who's single, no kids, you can pay less than $50 and have health insurance. If you're married, kids, family, you're looking close to 225 around that area as far as health insurance for you and your family. So it is an option, it's not mandatory, because as well, some of our reservists do work civilian jobs. So civilian. Yeah, they get some good healthcare benefits through their full-time job. So it's basically which one is gonna be more beneficial, go with that one. But always for my single guys or my single individuals, you can't beat 50 bucks for health insurance. Yeah, like not even close. So the crazy thing, actually, I'm gonna follow up on this. This was like a huge reason why I'm like, I'm a big advocate for people that are interested in joining the military. I'm super for it, because the healthcare aspect alone of the military, I know some people will complain that military healthcare is not the best. But to be honest, civilian healthcare sometimes isn't the best either. So it's either way, but my wife right now, because we work, we just work from home for ourselves right now. So we don't have employer benefits, anything. We don't get none of that. So her healthcare right now is like $500 a month, just for her, because I'm covered through the VA. So just her, $500 a month. And you're saying like individual plan through the reserves, 50 bucks. We're spending 10 times that much money. And on top of that, whenever she goes to the doctor, sometimes she still has to pay a co-pay. Sometimes they'll send her a bill in the mail because her insurance didn't cover all of it. And it's like, it's such a nightmare. So when you think about going in, you're like, oh, you still have to pay for healthcare. But you're like, yeah, like 50 bucks. And then it's like, boom, it's all covered. Like you don't have to worry about getting a bill for an X-ray or going to the wrong doctor or whatever. Like most of the time you have to call, get a referral, they'll get you scheduled. And you can go, well here, especially like with the VA, I don't know how it works for Tri-Care reserves, but like with the VA, they have like, it's set up where a lot of the urgent cares here, you don't need a referral. So like, I've been having like shoulder back pain lately and I just go to the urgent care right away and they can look at me and do X-rays, do whatever and they just send the bill to the VA, but that urgent care is already covered. But it's like having that, like for me, I'm still taken care of by like my military aspect for my healthcare. And I'm like, my experience right now compared to McKenna's, it's like, she spends so much money, $500 a month. And it's like, so that's a big, like a big selling point I feel like for the military in general, but even the reserves is doing one weekend a month to save $450 on your healthcare, like. And that 450 can go to something else. Right there, you're getting $250 a month for one weekend, but then you're saving $450 a month. So then it's like, really, you're getting paid like, what, that's like $700 right there. Really, you're saving a ton of money and you're getting paid on top of it to save. So. And then the best thing about it is if you don't have any health insurance, when you do apply for the Tri-Care Reserve, they have a list of approved primary care physicians within your location that are approved through Tri-Care. And then as well, like for me, I'm going through pre-marriage counseling. Our counselor wasn't originally approved through Tri-Care. She went through the channels and now she's officially approved. So our pre-marriage counseling is paid for and all got to come out of pocket for that. And now all your friends will get married in the area. You can send them to her because now she's approved. And then she's going to possibly get more business from it too. So it almost benefits her to be approved through that channel. Exactly. That's awesome. If you're in the reserves, do you qualify for the VA home loan? Yes, and if I'm correct, you have to complete your initial six years before you're eligible for the VA home loan. That's the only caveat to it. Once you complete that six-year contract, it's basically kind of up as well. Okay, so it's not like active duty because once you're on active duty, and I think there's a certain timeframe, but it's a really short timeframe that you have to complete. But that's good to know that like, if you served in the reserves, you did your six years, you get out after the reserves, you'll have earned that benefit through the VA. After serving in the reserves, once you get out or when you're in the process of getting out, can you qualify for VA disability benefits? Yes, as long as you made sure everything was documented while you were in, you should be fine. As far as when you do get the go-to-terventors affair and get your evaluations and all, it's the same thing. Just because we're doing one week in a month, that body is still gonna get that wear and tear because you're doing the exact same career field as our active duty counterparts. So as long as it was documented while you were in and it was related to your work in some way. Correct. You'll be able to file for a rating once you're out. How does retirement work in the reserves? Like you just do 20 years and then you're just like, boom, I'm punching out after 20. I get my check then like the next month or do you have to wait to get that retirement check or do you have to do a certain amount of time past 20? So the Air Force adopted the 401k plan. So basically you will put in to the 401k or into the blended retirement plan. Even if you don't put in, the military is gonna put in 1%, but at max they're gonna match up to 5% of whatever you put in. And so after what you put in for two years, that's your money, but you can do 20 years to be officially retired from the Air Force Reserve and then you'll have your blended retirement plan to fall back on. As long as you put something in into your blended retirement plan, you should set yourself up for success because once you do get out, you can transfer that to whatever the civilian equivalent is to whatever new job you go to. So that way, that money's not just sitting somewhere. You can continuously keep building it. So you guys don't offer like a pension plan that like once you're like active duty when you finish your 20 years, you will keep getting paid a percentage of your pay the rest of your life. And then reserves like do you get, you don't get pay right after you retire? Do you get it at a certain time? Like a pension? I've been in the reserve for 11 years, but I've been an active guard of reservists for seven years. So to get my active duty retirement, I have to complete 13 more years till you get my active duty retirement, meaning as soon as I'm done, I can pull immediately instead of waiting till I'm 65. Or I technically got nine years left. And if I wanna go ahead and punch out, I gotta wait till I'm 65 before I start pulling out money. So. So if you want to start getting paid right when you retire until the rest of your life, you need 20 years active. But if you just did that one weekend a month, if you do that for multiple years or 20 years, you're not gonna get a paycheck as soon as you hit 20. How does healthcare work after you retire? I know you might not know because you're not retired. And that's not probably something you guys talk a lot about with recruits because that's so far into the future. And then only like 15% or so actually retire. So you're looking at like this is a very small amount of people that you would, if you tried to tell everyone about, but like active duty, if you do 20 years, like your healthcare is covered for the rest of your life. But what about in the reserves? Does it work the same way? Honestly, I wouldn't know. I would have to, I would assume I would be the tri-care retired plan, but I would have to honestly look into that. Like you said, that's so far down the road. That's something we really don't discuss with people. By that time, the guys that are close to retirement, they're getting their breathing because they're going through their transitional assistance program. So they're going to get- You're going to have a lot of people that are helping you with that process because they're going to make sure they're trying to take care of you once you become a retired veteran at that point. So cool.