Retire at 41 and the account is off limits for eighteen years. The 72t rule is the door people go looking for, and the commitment is longer than five years.

One page in the retirement stack cannot be undone the following year. The military survivor benefit plan election, with the arithmetic shown and the verdict left where it belongs.

Military retired pay is taxable at the federal level. Here is what shrinks a gross pension figure, how VA disability moves dollars between columns, and how to build the number a plan can actually use.

The list is the easy part. Here is the current state treatment, and what the difference is actually worth once every other relocation cost is counted.