Given that in the U.S. military you can retire and start drawing retirement pay (a pension) at twenty years of service (in other words, as young as 37 years old!), I retired after 25 years at age 48 and have been getting my pension, with adjustments for cost-of-living increases for thirty years now. In speaking with other military retirees, we cannot believe what a good deal we think we got.
Of course, I was in the Navy and never got shot at, was never in danger from an improvised explosive device, etc. There was generally not much danger for Air Force people either. The Army and Marine Corps were a different deal, with plenty of casualties in the Middle East wars. And regardless of service, if you make a career of it there are some duty stations that are just plain unpleasant, so you have to the take the bad with the good.
I still feel like I made out like a bandit -- The Navy has been paying me monthly for 55 years.
