What's up guys and welcome back to the channel. If you're new, consider subscribing today. We're gonna be talking about five mistakes that people make when joining the military and I'm really excited because one of these tips is my all-time favorite thing to tell people about what they should do when they join the military. All right guys, if you are joining the military really soon or you want to in the next year, two, three years, maybe five years from now, this information is still gonna be relevant for you even if it's way out in the future and it's even more relevant if you're joining the military this week. So I'm glad that you're watching this because this video should be able to help you a lot. Now a really common mistake that most people make when joining the military and that's why I'm starting it off as the first mistake that people make is expecting to do 20 years when they join the military. You guys might think, well no, I am doing 20 years or I want to do 20 years and I'm just gonna gently ask you to please reconsider. Not saying that you're gonna go, well then I'm only gonna do one enlistment. I'm not asking you to do that either. What I'm asking is for you to have an open mind and take your first enlistment as your first enlistment.  Everyone, nearly everyone in your basic training flight. Now I'm referring to basic training because I was in the Air Force but if you're in any other military branch this goes pretty much the exact same thing. The real life statistics of this are it's around 15% on average of all the branches of people that join actually do 20 and a lot of people make that mistake of thinking they're doing 20 before they've even set foot into the military. It can be extremely beneficial if you just take things one enlistment at a time. There have been so many people that have joined the military that say that they are gonna get out after their first four or six years and they end up re-enlisting because they truly love it. So by saying you're just gonna come in and take it one enlistment at a time does not mean that you aren't doing 20 and to tack on a little mistake that people make with this one is also because they plan on doing 20 years they stop trying to set themselves up in case they don't do 20 years. So then it becomes, well I don't wanna do 20 years but I don't have another option so I have to.  Stay in, get out, make sure you're building skills make sure you're improving make sure you're building a work ethic that is going to be successful regardless whether you stand for 20 or you get out after four. The next mistake that I see people make when they join the military is they think that the military is just like the commercials on TV. Now I was in the Air Force and one of these things would be that people think everybody flies. Now I know a lot of people once they start to research the military they start to understand that there's all these different jobs. Do not think that your job is gonna be like the Air Force commercial for your job. I highly suggest that you do your research find a real airman or a real soldier or somebody that has your job and talk with them or either watch their videos get to understand what it's really gonna be like. And to be quite honest the military is similar to just a regular job.  Now there are some limitations I'll be getting into that with one of the next mistakes that I talk about. The military pays hundreds of thousands millions of dollars every year for advertisements, commercials to convince people to join. But the best thing that I can compare this to would be Disneyland for instance. When you see a commercial for Disneyland it shows you how amazing the experience is gonna be. It's gonna be magical.  That is not what the commercial showed. The commercial did not show anybody waiting in line for all day to ride one ride. So that is what you have to keep in mind is the commercials aren't showing all the things that are gonna happen in your day. They're literally showing the best case scenarios and to be honest, those best case scenarios are almost never gonna happen. They're not showing you all this stuff because it would make you realize how normal it is. Their goal is to convince you that it is magical so you go and then you'll find out when you're there. That is why I say in the last mistake have an open mind because commercials are not what it's gonna be like at all. I highly suggest you do your research on YouTube. If you're watching this video, it's a good thing means you're doing your research means you're doing the right thing to set your life up making sure you're putting yourself on track and you're not set up for failure. Another mistake that I see people making is not taking rules seriously. There's so many simple things that people get in trouble for all the time because they think they can get away with it such as underage drinking, breaking curfew and even not following your job correctly. There's a lot of job directives or in maintenance we had technical orders which was how we did our job and a lot of people don't take it serious but if something happens, you are legally responsible for your repairs that you do. So if you do a repair which results in somebody dying, you can actually go to prison for killing somebody. People don't take it serious. I don't know why but that's why it's making it into this video and you also might be wondering curfews, what, yes, overseas you might have curfews. In Korea and Japan currently they have curfews. When I was there in Japan in 2013 until 2016, we had a curfew the whole time. When I first got there curfew was midnight. You had to be back on base before midnight. You could get in a lot of trouble. You could lose rank, you could lose pay, you could have all these issues that could happen because you didn't follow a rule that you might have even thought was stupid but it doesn't matter because in the military rules are rules. They need to be followed. Don't take them as a joke, especially underage drinking. That is one of the easiest ways to get kicked out of the military. Well that and DUIs and you might think, common sense don't drink and drive especially onto a military base but you would be surprised to know how many people actually get stopped at the gate coming onto base, driving a vehicle after they'd been drinking.  My next mistake is people not understanding that the military controls everything that you do. Literally, they own you. Now something that I had commented on when I started this video was I've had a lot of statements, not questions but statements towards me saying they can't do that. What happened to freedom of speech? Freedom of speech means that you can say whatever you want to say but everyone else can do the same thing. A company has the freedom to not serve you if they don't want to.  And you can't say, I got freedom of speech, I can say eff you to whoever I want. They can go and we reserve the right to not serve you. Well when you join the military, you swear an oath to be a part of the military under contract the entire time. It's not like I swear to only be an airman during this hour and this hour of these days. No, you're literally saying for the next six years you own me. You don't say that exactly but like that's what you're doing. You're saying I will follow the orders of the officers appointed over me. Well, guess what? The officers appointed over you all the way to who's running the military. There's all these rules that they have appointed as laws while you're in the military. And a lot of people don't think that the military can control you or own you but they do. Another thing that people don't realize is the military can control when you travel and where you travel. Now a lot of people that are used to not being in the military like people joining, well in the military every time you go on vacation or you leave the general area that your base is at you actually have to one have approval and also let people know where you're going and what you're gonna be doing because the military likes to keep tabs on people knowing that they're not doing anything illegal, knowing where they are in case we get a recall and also knowing where they are because the military is paying for our healthcare and everything and they're taking care of us health wise. So people need to know we go and get injured that we can still get taken care of and everything. So there's all these things that go into it but the military they control where you go and when you go. You might wanna go on vacation during Christmas but a lot of people do.  Oh but I wanna go. Sorry we could only afford three people to be gone during Christmas and you didn't sign up soon enough. So all of a sudden you don't get to go home and spend time with your family because you have to be present because our mission is 24 seven it's always going. So you have to understand that you are limited to when you can take vacation time. So a lot of shops for instance my shop when I was in the most people we would allow to have leave at one time was two. So if you were like hey I wanna take these three weeks to go home but there was already two people during that portion and then like one person during the other they might be like oh you don't get those three weeks but we can give you this week and a half and you're like no but I wanna be home for that and they're like we already have two people going it doesn't matter. Even though it's not a holiday it's not anything crazy the military needs to balance when they have people there and when they have people on vacation. For instance living in the dorms if you had just joined and you're 30 some years old they're gonna be doing dorm checks. Regardless whether you're an adult or not that's kind of their responsibility they need to make sure that one you're taking care of the dorm two you're taking care of the dorm so other people don't suffer from like cockroaches nasty mold all sorts of stuff. Now believe me you would think how would people in the military let cockroaches be in the room all this stuff. The amount of people that fail room inspections because they have literal boxes of pizza sitting in their room half eaten just sitting on the floor things will get into your dorms and people are lazy.  Well people are it blows my mind I do not get it. Two of the things that I wanna talk about with this same mistake about people not understanding that the military controls them is double jeopardy is a thing. Now in the United States in the legal system double jeopardy is not allowed but in the military it's a whole new ball game. Double jeopardy in this instance means if you get a DUI off base not only are you gonna get a ticket from the state and lose your license from the state but the military base will also restrict your driving privileges. So if you get caught stealing or doing something off base the military is gonna double up on that punishment not only are you gonna possibly go to jail and get fined by the state but the military is gonna go okay well we're gonna withhold your pay for a month. They might even deduct your rank they might put you on special duty they might restrict you to base. Those are all things that are very very plausible if you get a DUI off base but getting a DUI on base would result in you losing your driving privileges for six months to a year on base but they still let you have your driver's license so you'd actually be able to drive home or have somebody pick you up. So it still becomes a big pain but it's not as bad as getting in trouble off base but again if you just understand that you need to follow the rules not make mistakes you're gonna be fine. All right guys this is my personal favorite thing that I tell people when joining the military because this is one of the biggest mistakes that people make when they join the military. It goes down to your TSP now your TSP is your Thrift Savings Plan. This is your 401k of the military. Now I know some people might be like I don't want to save money that I can use when I'm 65. I just want to spend my money now I want to live while I'm young. Okay you can do both I promise you can do both but you do have to make some sacrifices. Now your TSP is like it's huge. It is literally one of the biggest advantages of being in the military. There are not many companies that offer a 401k as good as the military. Now the military when you join you can opt into the TSP. Anybody joining after this video has been posted as of January 1st of 2018 you are gonna be automatically set into the blended retirement system. This is called the BRS. This is the new retirement system and a lot of people didn't like it but that's because they're stupid. I didn't really mean that but I kind of did it at the same time.  Remember what I said about people retiring? It's only like 18% in the Air Force means it's even less in the other branches. So unless you're in that 15% of people that actually do 20 years the old retirement system was garbage. The new retirement system actually benefits 100% of the people that join. 100% the other retirement system only benefited 15% of the military.  Now with the new retirement system when you join I highly suggest that you just get used to putting 5% of your base pay right into it. Just throw it at it, don't worry about it act like it never existed and just let your TSP grow. Now the best part about this is after that one or two year mark the military will start to match your 5%. If you're 5% of your base pay equals $100 and that's what you're taking out of your paycheck every single month to throw in your TSP the military will be like oh we'll just give you an extra $100 for your TSP as well. They're literally giving you free money. They did not do this when I first joined because the old retirement system and it sucked. The new retirement system is the coolest thing in the world and that is why it is my favorite thing to talk about. Like I get so hype about it because I wish I could go back and be like yo why wasn't this started when I joined in 2013 because I would have been on that bandwagon ASAP. Now why this is so important is because it's allowing you to grow a retirement fund that is way bigger, way bigger than the old retirement system ever would have allowed you to. It is very, very rare for companies to do that. Some companies will say we will give you an additional 5% of what you're giving so if you were giving $100 every month some companies would be like we'll give you an extra 5 every month which turns out to be $60 a year which with interest over 40 years could be a ridiculous amount of money. But think about $100 a month extra with interest growing over 40 years. Yeah, we're talking $1200 a year extra money sometimes more than that. I think when I got out of the Air Force as an E5 they were putting an additional like $160 or $180 into my TSP every month when I got out because January 1st of 2018, you know what I did? I got in and I opted into the new BRS. Even though I was getting out for a year I got an extra almost $200 a month put into my TSP. Almost $2,400 over a year but in my TSP that's gonna grow on interest until I'm 65. That's insane. That is literally the coolest thing ever. Now I actually wrote an e-book on six other ways on top of your TSP and in that e-book I actually talk about the ways that I think you should maximize your TSP. So if you guys are interested in that e-book I'll leave a link down below but I highly, highly, highly suggest it because I literally is, it's what I'm most passionate about. That's why I say this for the last because I like to talk about it a lot. Saving money and building your futures like the best thing ever. Like literally look at this YouTube channel. I got made fun of. I had 20 subscribers, 26 subscribers when I left for basic training. We're at $160,000 right now, right? Like build stuff for your future just because it's not big right now doesn't mean six years from now, 20 years from now, 40 years from now it's not gonna be freaking massive. What the coolest thing about life is is that if you set yourself up, you can be successful. Now back to what I was saying about when I was in the military I was getting around $2,000 extra a year put into my TSP. Now imagine doing 10 years in the military. That's an extra $20,000 thrown into your TSP and even if you choose not to re-enlist after 10 years and you just bounce you can still have time. If you join at 18 you'll be 28 at 10 years. And if you could choose to get out you could have like $100,000 sitting in your TSP after those 10 years with interest and everything that you had put in the military match interest grew on it. And then like the closer you were to getting out they were matching like $200 plus a month just giving it to you for free. If you just let it sit there after 10 years you could have over $700,000 by the time you reach 65 just for doing 10 years in the military. And I'm like, why would you not do that? Well, the reason it's in this video is because people literally don't do that. They make that mistake. I'm not investing in their TSP. Guess who was one of those people? This guy.  Why would I want to put money away for my future? But then 2015 into 2016 a lot of things changed. I met a lot of good people. I met somebody that sat me down and was like, you need to do this. Once I started doing it I realized how freaking awesome it is. And I regretted every single day that I didn't do it earlier because I could have had so much more money in my retirement fund. Now I'm literally gonna have like $107,000 because I only invested for like two years but if I would have done it all six years of my career I could have like $400,000 versus $100,000. And I'm like, why would I make that mistake? Well, I made that mistake and that's why I'm making these videos and that's why I wrote that ebook is because I walk you through a lot of the things that I did in my life and the things that I did right I share it with you and the things that I did wrong I share it with you. So you can not only learn from my mistakes but you can be better than me. So I hope you guys appreciate the video. If you did be sure to drop a thumbs up. Also leave in the comment section this emoji right here so I know that you watch this all the way through. Also, if you don't follow me on my social media all the links are in the description as well keep up with me on there and I hope to see you guys in my next video. Peace out.