Is it different?
If they were in the Baby Guard in High school does that somehow count towards retirement?
If someone is in the guard and has 20 years in do they retire like a person in the other military services do?
Is it different?
Yes, but it is a prorated retirement based on the number of days served over the 20 years, and does not begin until age 60. Benefits like Tricare also begin at 60.
If they were in the Baby Guard in High school does that somehow count towards retirement?
No, the Junior ROTC program (which is not the National Guard) does not count.
Unless it changed since i was in, 20 years in the guard all have to be good years. You have to accumulate points per year. If short, that year don’t count and must be made up. I believe you must have 60 points per year (15 for AT; 4 per month for weekend duty). Also, you can ‘retire’ after 20 years but must wait until you’re of age (I think 60 y/o). I don’t know about Baby Guard, never heard of it. Someone else can comment on that. Also, if I am wrong on anything, pls correct me.
My wife’s sister joined the Air Force just out of high school. She was alternatively active in the guard and the regular Air Force for 27 years, sometimes active as a liaison between the two. But she was never a part timer, so I am not sure if that is what you are talking about. Since she was full time in both the Guard and the regular Air Force she started collecting all of her benefits as soon as she retired and did not have to wait.
Our Brother-in-law is currently a “wing commander”, full bird colonel in the California National Guard. He is currently full time active in the Guard, but he has also been full time in both the Guard and the regular Air Force. During part of his career he was part time in the Guard. He is getting close to 60 when he will be forced to retire with around 40 years in, since he joined the Air Force enlisted when he was just out of high school and then went on to Officer Candidate School and got a degree in electrical engineering as well.
Both of them are quite good at maximizing their retirement benefits.
It’s sort of the same but different. Active duty 20 years, you get 365 points per year. National Guard or Reserves, you get 60 points per year. So your check is about 1/6 of an active duty retiree. But if called to active duty, you of course, acquire more points.
In MA the guard retirement kicks in at retirement age, not if you are 48, for example.
So the responses have been correct, but it has recently changed. Once you hit your retirement eligibility at the 20-year mark, You’ll get a letter detailing that. You can’t take pension until you hit 60, except for some special circumstances.
You receive a base pension of I think 2.5%, based on your highest three months of pay when you get out, multiplied by the number of equivalent years you served. Guard time maxes out at 130 points per year, while active duty time is the full 365. So you’ll add up all your points to find out how many full-time years you were equivalent to, and that’ll determine how high of a pension you get. So, any deployments, ADOS (Active Duty - Operational Support), AGR (Active Guard/Reserve), etc will increase your effective number of years compared to the base Guard time. So you can, between AGR and staying in for more than 20 years, manage to hit enough time to get the full pension as active duty does.
Recently, though, they changed this to where you now only have a 2% (maybe 1.5%) multiplier, but they now match some of your TPS contributions (401k essentially). Most current Guard had to choose between the old system or the new one. The main point of this was to help all the people that didn’t stay in the full 20, to get them more into their retirement plans, since before you had to get either 20 years, or have zero gov retirement help. Now they help you a bit.
JROTC does nothing for military. Real ROTC (college level) is iffy. I believe service academies are credited for retirement time, but ROTC is usually not. UNLESS, you are in the Guard and part of the SMP program, where you still do regular drills with your unit. ROTC stuff won’t usually count, but the Guard stuff still will.
Glad I went AD, retired at 37.