At 37 the only active force that will accept you is the USAF/Space Force and I'm guessing you'll need a special skill to interest them. The Texas State Guard will take you though.

OldArmyCT said:

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At 37 the only active force that will accept you is the USAF/Space Force and I'm guessing you'll need a special skill to interest them. The Texas State Guard will take you though.

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This is inaccurate. The Navy age limit for both active and reserve is 41, the Air Force is 39 and 42, the Coast Guard is 41 for both. The space force is 42. The Army is technically 35, but in the Guard age waivers are approved based on local unit needs, so if the local unit wants you at 37 they can get you a waiver. The Texas State Guard is not the military at all

If you're at all inclined, being in the military is the greatest opportunity of your life. At 37 the chances of being commissioned as an officer are low, but tbh the increased training time might not be worth your trade offs anyway. If I could go back in time I would have enlisted instead myself.

Given your life circumstances, I assume you're interested in the guard/reserves. If not let us know and we'll try to answer active duty questions

I wasn't in the guard/reserves, so I can't offer any detailed information about the time requirements for that, but in general your entry commitment would be the basic training period. Different branches handle reserves job-specific training differently. E.g., you might go back to your unit and wait to go to your job training course for a while. In the Army, each job's training phase is a different length and in a different location. As a dad with a business, choosing a pulmonary technologist or nuclear sub mechanic are probably bad choices since those training phases can be almost a year long. There is no shame in picking something shorter (or simply more local to you). The truck driver school, for example, is about 6 weeks long. Your family can come visit you in that phase, but the military won't pay to put them up in a hotel or anything.

Tons of folks look back and say "man I should have joined". Vanishingly few people look back and say "man I shouldn't have joined", and those people probably had their own disciplinary problems that contributed to their displeasure. Some days are hard, and some days will exasperate you with the silliness. But if you're physically fit, you're still interested before the age door slams, and your wife is supportive I, as a random internet nobody, say it's worth doing

As a reservist/guardsman, you will have many active duty opportunities (voluntarily & otherwise) outside of your initial active duty for training. Depending on your job, you might be able to pick and choose from available temporary duty (TDY) opportunities at specific locations away from your home unit. TDY's can vary in length of time from 1 month to +6 months.

theeyetest said:

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Tango.Mike said:

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OldArmyCT said:

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At 37 the only active force that will accept you is the USAF/Space Force and I'm guessing you'll need a special skill to interest them. The Texas State Guard will take you though.

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This is inaccurate. The Navy age limit for both active and reserve is 41, the Air Force is 39 and 42, the Coast Guard is 41 for both. The space force is 42. The Army is technically 35, but in the Guard age waivers are approved based on local unit needs, so if the local unit wants you at 37 they can get you a waiver. The Texas State Guard is not the military at all

If you're at all inclined, being in the military is the greatest opportunity of your life. At 37 the chances of being commissioned as an officer are low, but tbh the increased training time might not be worth your trade offs anyway. If I could go back in time I would have enlisted instead myself.

Given your life circumstances, I assume you're interested in the guard/reserves. If not let us know and we'll try to answer active duty questions

I wasn't in the guard/reserves, so I can't offer any detailed information about the time requirements for that, but in general your entry commitment would be the basic training period. Different branches handle reserves job-specific training differently. E.g., you might go back to your unit and wait to go to your job training course for a while. In the Army, each job's training phase is a different length and in a different location. As a dad with a business, choosing a pulmonary technologist or nuclear sub mechanic are probably bad choices since those training phases can be almost a year long. There is no shame in picking something shorter (or simply more local to you). The truck driver school, for example, is about 6 weeks long. Your family can come visit you in that phase, but the military won't pay to put them up in a hotel or anything.

Tons of folks look back and say "man I should have joined". Vanishingly few people look back and say "man I shouldn't have joined", and those people probably had their own disciplinary problems that contributed to their displeasure. Some days are hard, and some days will exasperate you with the silliness. But if you're physically fit, you're still interested before the age door slams, and your wife is supportive I, as a random internet nobody, say it's worth doing

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Thank you so much for this though out response. If I do decide to go in, I'd go all in. Sell the business and go active duty. We've got deep roots where we live right now and it would be a hell of a change.

I just cannot let this feeling go that I need to serve. It won't leave me alone and I have to think at this point it's a higher power leading me to this.

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Active duty is another level of rock-solid agreement with your wife. It will be the most extreme lifestyle change that you cannot possibly predict, and I don't mean the time commitments. I'm basing all of these comments on the assumption that you will not be able to get commissioned due to age. If you're able to swing that, for which the odds will be very low, that again is a whole different conversation.

As an E-3, your salary will be $33k (before taxes) plus housing allowance (based on too many factors, including location, to give you a hard number) that will be around $1200-1500 per month. Most lower enlisted live on base/post because the cost of living off post is untenable. Housing on base/post is clustered by rank group, so you'd be living in a townhouse area with 18-24-year olds and their families. Since it's not their house, the effort paid to keep the area free of squalor is virtually nonexistent as expected. Of course their leadership is supposed to go by and inspect their on base/post housing regularly, but that rarely gets to the top of the to-do list.

You and your wife also need to get in complete eye-lock about what enlisted life means for home time. "Most" days are 0630-1700. But, your NCO (first line supervisor) could require you to show up every morning an hour before formation (0530). And, even if the "normal" duty day ends at 1700, if your unit is still sweeping the motor pool / hangar / whatever, your butt isn't leaving until it's done. Less frequent though it happens - someone in another unit at the other end of base/post loses a pair of NVGs. The whole base/post will be locked down until they're found. That's right, it's not even your unit (much less your assigned NVGs), but your ass is sitting in the unit area playing Candy Crush on your phone for 18 hours until the item is found. You can't go home, your wife can't come to you.

The military will generally comp you time off when they steal your extra time (i.e., if you have to work overnight you'll usually get the next day off as comp time), but they're going to steal your extra time. If it's your squad's turn to man the duty desk on Sunday, you'll be tasked with sitting there watching the phone not ring all night long.

These are just small examples of things that turn into blazing marital problems among enlisted folks (and even among officers). You won't have a say in what you're told to do, and your wife may not be as on board with the lifestyle as y'all thought she would be (I'm using the royal you, not YOU personally).

I'm 100% not trying to scare you off, but you and your wife need to understand what it means to enlist in the military. It's not just your job and she's at home with your kids. She and your kids are going to be included in the asshattery every day. And since you said your small business is "successful", your family probably isn't accustomed to living on the equivalent of $16/hr income.

Tango.Mike said:

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theeyetest said:

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Tango.Mike said:

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OldArmyCT said:

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At 37 the only active force that will accept you is the USAF/Space Force and I'm guessing you'll need a special skill to interest them. The Texas State Guard will take you though.

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This is inaccurate. The Navy age limit for both active and reserve is 41, the Air Force is 39 and 42, the Coast Guard is 41 for both. The space force is 42. The Army is technically 35, but in the Guard age waivers are approved based on local unit needs, so if the local unit wants you at 37 they can get you a waiver. The Texas State Guard is not the military at all

If you're at all inclined, being in the military is the greatest opportunity of your life. At 37 the chances of being commissioned as an officer are low, but tbh the increased training time might not be worth your trade offs anyway. If I could go back in time I would have enlisted instead myself.

Given your life circumstances, I assume you're interested in the guard/reserves. If not let us know and we'll try to answer active duty questions

I wasn't in the guard/reserves, so I can't offer any detailed information about the time requirements for that, but in general your entry commitment would be the basic training period. Different branches handle reserves job-specific training differently. E.g., you might go back to your unit and wait to go to your job training course for a while. In the Army, each job's training phase is a different length and in a different location. As a dad with a business, choosing a pulmonary technologist or nuclear sub mechanic are probably bad choices since those training phases can be almost a year long. There is no shame in picking something shorter (or simply more local to you). The truck driver school, for example, is about 6 weeks long. Your family can come visit you in that phase, but the military won't pay to put them up in a hotel or anything.

Tons of folks look back and say "man I should have joined". Vanishingly few people look back and say "man I shouldn't have joined", and those people probably had their own disciplinary problems that contributed to their displeasure. Some days are hard, and some days will exasperate you with the silliness. But if you're physically fit, you're still interested before the age door slams, and your wife is supportive I, as a random internet nobody, say it's worth doing

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Thank you so much for this though out response. If I do decide to go in, I'd go all in. Sell the business and go active duty. We've got deep roots where we live right now and it would be a hell of a change.

I just cannot let this feeling go that I need to serve. It won't leave me alone and I have to think at this point it's a higher power leading me to this.

---

Active duty is another level of rock-solid agreement with your wife. It will be the most extreme lifestyle change that you cannot possibly predict, and I don't mean the time commitments. I'm basing all of these comments on the assumption that you will not be able to get commissioned due to age. If you're able to swing that, for which the odds will be very low, that again is a whole different conversation.

As an E-3, your salary will be $33k (before taxes) plus housing allowance (based on too many factors, including location, to give you a hard number) that will be around $1200-1500 per month. Most lower enlisted live on base/post because the cost of living off post is untenable. Housing on base/post is clustered by rank group, so you'd be living in a townhouse area with 18-24-year olds and their families. Since it's not their house, the effort paid to keep the area free of squalor is virtually nonexistent as expected. Of course their leadership is supposed to go by and inspect their on base/post housing regularly, but that rarely gets to the top of the to-do list.

You and your wife also need to get in complete eye-lock about what enlisted life means for home time. "Most" days are 0630-1700. But, your NCO (first line supervisor) could require you to show up every morning an hour before formation (0530). And, even if the "normal" duty day ends at 1700, if your unit is still sweeping the motor pool / hangar / whatever, your butt isn't leaving until it's done. Less frequent though it happens - someone in another unit at the other end of base/post loses a pair of NVGs. The whole base/post will be locked down until they're found. That's right, it's not even your unit (much less your assigned NVGs), but your ass is sitting in the unit area playing Candy Crush on your phone for 18 hours until the item is found. You can't go home, your wife can't come to you.

The military will generally comp you time off when they steal your extra time (i.e., if you have to work overnight you'll usually get the next day off as comp time), but they're going to steal your extra time. If it's your squad's turn to man the duty desk on Sunday, you'll be tasked with sitting there watching the phone not ring all night long.

These are just small examples of things that turn into blazing marital problems among enlisted folks (and even among officers). You won't have a say in what you're told to do, and your wife may not be as on board with the lifestyle as y'all thought she would be (I'm using the royal you, not YOU personally).

I'm 100% not trying to scare you off, but you and your wife need to understand what it means to enlist in the military. It's not just your job and she's at home with your kids. She and your kids are going to be included in the asshattery every day. And since you said your small business is "successful", your family probably isn't accustomed to living on the equivalent of $16/hr income.

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Officer time conflicts are not any different than enlisted, if the officer is getting more time off than his troops it'll eventually bite him in the butt. As a platoon leader we marched into the motor pool and out at COB as a platoon, if one had to stay to do something we all stayed. Field duty or deployments cut deeply into home time and that makes for family problems. I spent 20 as a CWO and commissioned and the one thing we didn't have was multiple deployments. We did have Vietnam though.
I hear from people all the time saying they should have joined. That's easy to say once your window has closed. This'll never happen but a 2 year draft would do wonders for a lot of people. As for quitting your job at 37 to join the military as a old as heck enlisted man earning nothing as far as pay, that will shock the heck out of your family and that alone should give you pause.

The military will generally comp you time off when they steal your extra time (i.e., if you have to work overnight you'll usually get the next day off as comp time), but they're going to steal your extra time.


Is this really a thing? Dang, Serving in a ship and working 110 hours a week for 3 years, I should have about 2 years of comp time coming. Then again, this was in the mid-1970's, so maybe SOL (statute of limitations as well as sh_t outta luck) applies

Good luck with your decision OP. We'll be pulling for you.

OP I absolutely no offense in my reply, just going to be a little blunt:

• The military is for the most part a young persons (mostly man's) game. The physical demands and long hours, depending on which branch you are in might be more than you bargained for even though you are " in decent shape".
• As a lowly enlisted puke (speaking from a Navy perspective) you are not going to get brownie points for being 37 years old, you will be cleaning toilets, mess cooking, and doing all sorts of other sh***y jobs. Not just a few, a lot of them. I feel pretty sure the other services are equally qualified in coming up with unpleasant things for young people to do.
• You are going to have someone 22 years old telling you what to do. Doesn't matter where you go, it will happen. All the time.
• My thinking is if you have any doubt you should seriously, seriously lean against it.
• If you are going to do it because you have to, and no one can keep you from it, I wish you nothing but the best.

I am currently in the Army Reserves. Direct Commissioned at 34 with a medical degree. My family and I tossed around the idea of going Active but the Reserves allowed for more flexibility. The solid support structure is highly beneficial with the Reserves. I am probably gone 60 days a year.

It would be helpful if you lay out what it is exactly what you want to do. Going into a recruiters office with starry eyes and nothing else is for the 17 and 18 year olds. Not full grown man with families. The depth and scale of the military is so vast that it is impossible really for us to give any real advice without your input here. I was an enlisted grunt at 29 Palms during a time of war. I couldn't even begin to comprehend the lifestyle and challenges that an Air Force pilot stationed in Germany in peace goes through and vice versa for example. What are you looking to contribute and to get out of service?

Enlisting/commissioning at your age is certainly not unheard of, but you will definitely face challenges that your peers will not. Conversely, you may also have advantages as well though I would not count on that.

OldArmyCT said:

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Tango.Mike said:

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theeyetest said:

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Tango.Mike said:

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OldArmyCT said:

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At 37 the only active force that will accept you is the USAF/Space Force and I'm guessing you'll need a special skill to interest them. The Texas State Guard will take you though.

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If you're at all inclined, being in the military is the greatest opportunity of your life. At 37 the chances of being commissioned as an officer are low, but tbh the increased training time might not be worth your trade offs anyway. If I could go back in time I would have enlisted instead myself.

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Thank you so much for this though out response. If I do decide to go in, I'd go all in. Sell the business and go active duty. We've got deep roots where we live right now and it would be a hell of a change.

I just cannot let this feeling go that I need to serve. It won't leave me alone and I have to think at this point it's a higher power leading me to this.

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Officer time conflicts are not any different than enlisted, if the officer is getting more time off than his troops it'll eventually bite him in the butt.

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Officer and enlisted time commitments are wildly different. Have you ever seen an E4 writing the 6-week training plan? Making the command & shaft slides? Writing an op-plan / opord? Updating the platoon's METL assessment for the QTB?

Joes do a lot of things that officers dont, like sweep the motor pool, sit at the unit duty desk, get volunteered for post-FTX ammo detail. Officers do a lot of things that Joes dont do.

Back to the OP and the advice from everyone else, given your age, family, (assumed) standard of living, etc., active duty might not be what you want. I think the guard/reserves are a lot closer to what you need at this point in your life

-Already brought up but it won't be just you, your whole family is in if you are.
- I sort of did it all:
-- Enlisted a year after high school, single (fantastic adventure)
-- went to A&M and joined reserve after graduating (wasn't my cup of tea, enlisted active duty again first chance I got)
-- enlisted back into my old career field with the goal of getting a commission, I was 28 with a college degree and married (it was very hard to relate to the other members of my same rank, I was more comfortable with the CGOs that were more my age and my education level; not being a snob but when your peers sole goal in life is to go out and get drunk and tap everything that moves, it is just a little hard to hang out; maturity level was a big deal. I cannot stress enough maturity levels being hard to overcome. My son in law is dealing with the same thing, he enlisted in the Army at age 27, very difficult for him to relate to his peers.
-- Commissioned at age 31, still older than most peers but education levels were on par and fortunately, there were quite a few prior E's like me so many of my peers were around my age. Both of my kids were born into the military life so they weren't just thrown into it. I was able to ease my wife into the life in phases until she experienced life at full Ops Tempo [I was lucky] over the course of about 5 years.
- I'm not you, I'm not in your situation BUT, if I were you, I would consider Guard or Reserve at this stage and your situation. Many jobs will let you be as active as you want to be or just do your 1 weekend a month, 2 weeks a year?, deploy occasionally without uprooting your entire family and moving them from assignment to assignment.
- It's much more than just the job. Rewarding, but a bunch of sacrifice that others will have to commit to doing.

Tons of great advice have been given in this thread, only thing I will add is if you just MUST scratch this itch, scratch it in the National Guard, not active duty.

At your age and with a family, active duty will chew you up and spit you out. With the Guard, you can serve and still have your business and maintain the level of life satisfaction you currently have. The Guard has most every MOS that the active side does, depending on where you want to drill, which I would suspect is going to be close to home. They also have access to all the schools that the active side does.

Unless you want to move out of state, I would advise to not go into the Reserves, as they can move you where they need/want you and you will have to pack up and go. With the Guard you will stay in Texas, assuming that is where you currently reside.

I did 30 years and 24 days in the Army and enjoyed it immensely, so I would never advise anyone from joining the Army, or any other branch for that matter. My humble opinion is you and your family would happier with you serving your country in the Guard than in active duty. Its your choice, and good luck with whatever you choose.

P.S., If it fails miserably, please don't bash the service when you get out, as you are kind of an oblong piece trying to fit into a round hole from the outset.

Forgive the bluntness of this response.

It sounds to me as if you are undergoing some sort of personal crisis and want a way out. (By "crisis" I don't mean something dramatic necessarily: I also mean the seven year itch, the boredom of a specific job or location, an early mid-life crisis, etc. As you say, you feel "stuck.")

No point in speculating what that crisis might be.

You have a business that you make a living at. It would be gone if you go all in on your idea. You couldn't come back to it.

You have a wife. Very risky to ask her to take this plunge with you. VERY risky.

You have children who are used to stability. Very risky to make their lives unstable. My family moved a great deal, including every year I was in high school. I appreciate why we did it and I gained some from it, but I miss not having good friends from childhood and from high school.

You have three things that many, many people in the world lack and would not want to lose: a good job, a wife whom you presumably are in a good relationship with, and children whom you get to see and spend time with every day.

Please find someone with whom you can talk about whatever is going on in your life before you approach your wife with this idea.

OldArmy71 said:

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Forgive the bluntness of this response.

It sounds to me as if you are undergoing some sort of personal crisis and want a way out. (By "crisis" I don't mean something dramatic necessarily: I also mean the seven year itch, the boredom of a specific job or location, an early mid-life crisis, etc. As you say, you feel "stuck.")

No point in speculating what that crisis might be.

You have a business that you make a living at. It would be gone if you go all in on your idea. You couldn't come back to it.

You have a wife. Very risky to ask her to take this plunge with you. VERY risky.

You have children who are used to stability. Very risky to make their lives unstable. My family moved a great deal, including every year I was in high school. I appreciate why we did it and I gained some from it, but I miss not having good friends from childhood and from high school.

You have three things that many, many people in the world lack and would not want to lose: a good job, a wife whom you presumably are in a good relationship with, and children whom you get to see and spend time with every day.

Please find someone with whom you can talk about whatever is going on in your life before you approach your wife with this idea.

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He's right. Growing up as an AF brat and serving 20 myself I can tell you one of the biggest reasons people quit the military is the affect it has on family life. Deployments, FTX's, TDY's are all the norm in military life and they take a toll on marriages. As a kid I loved moving every 3 years, loved living in foreign countries, and still keep in touch with kids from my high school, which was in Germany. Talk to some of the wives though and you'll likely get a different response.

You might want to check out the U.S. Coast Guard. I got to know a lot about it when my son served 26 years. I went to every place that re served, including Guam. except Alaska. I met people of every grade and rank. He retired as the ninth Master Chief of the USCG.

My focus would be on my wife and particularly on those two young daughters.

My two cents

I was called to service as well and enlisted at 26 and with a degree from A&M. The thought of it scared the crap out of my wife when I joined and I'm not sure she's still that big a fan of the lifestyle. We're at our 6th duty station in 14.5 years now living in our 5th state. I'm currently TDY and have spent about a year and a half away from her and our kids with deployments and tdys during my career.

At 37, you're not really too old, we have people joining the air force at that age all of the time now. But, most of them are at a financial crossroads and joining to try to embark on a career rather than job hopping. They're searching for a stable job so they can provide for their families and willing to start at the bottom. That doesn't sound like you.

All that said, if you can't shake the passion to serve, it's an undeniably meaningful lifestyle if you can get into an AFSC/MOS where you can sync up your passions with military needs. I joined because I thought I could help hunt terrorists down, and now I speak Arabic and Persian and have spent a career doing just what I wanted to do. When I walk into work I still feel like I do extremely important work. So you have to REALLY do your research to know what job you are after. Some have mentioned the long hours and being treated like crap, this exists... but in my experience is very job and service specific. So again, do your research, air force language analysts have a much different day to day job than air force maintainers. Both are important jobs, but a very different experience.

Tango.Mike said:

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Less frequent though it happens - someone in another unit at the other end of base/post loses a pair of NVGs. The whole base/post will be locked down until they're found. That's right, it's not even your unit (much less your assigned NVGs), but your ass is sitting in the unit area playing Candy Crush on your phone for 18 hours until the item is found.

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I almost threw up from the memories reading this. "Hands across Sicily DZ" still makes my skin crawl. It was Temple Run for me though not Candy Crush. Also the best my company could do as far as comp time after one of these events was 0900 late call for work the next day.