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Reasons & Benefits of Joining the Army Military

Speaker 1 (00:01)
What’s up, my friends? Welcome back for another video. Us Army veteran Christopher chaos. In the previous video, I did five things you’ll hate about the army. Well, not everything sucks about the army. There are some great things, so that’s why we’re here for five things that you will love about the army, potentially. Potentially, there is more than five things, maybe less than five things. It really depends. But I’m going to outline some things that are maybe some common things that people love about being in the army. That’s the type of content you’re interested in. Well, make sure you subscribe to this channel. Look down below, make sure you are subscribed because we have this goal of trying to get to 100,000 subscribers before the end of this year. We are on track to do that, but I still can’t do it without your help. So please make sure you hit that subscribe button. Let’s talk about some things that you potentially could love about being in the United States Army. Keep in mind, as I talked about, with the five things you might hate about the army, I’m mainly talking about active duty. Some of these things may not apply necessarily to Reservists.

Speaker 1 (00:54)
This is mainly for active duty individuals. First thing, in a way is like a spin off from a con or a thing you might hate about the army in a way. And that is potentially the hours. I mentioned in the five things you hate about being in the army or might hate about being in the army is the long hours. Well, sometimes that’s not the case. Sometimes there are times where you don’t have anything going on and they’re like, Hey, go take off and if we need you, we’ll give you a call. The nice thing about that is it doesn’t matter if you work 20 hours in a day or 4 hours in a day or 1 hour in a day, whatever the case is, you’re still getting the same pay. You don’t normally have that in a civilian job. So if your employer sends you home because there ain’t crap going on, you’re probably not getting paid for the rest of that day. Not the case in the army. This isn’t something that happens a lot, but it’s really nice. And it’s something that I remember I loved. There was times where you show up at work, there ain’t really crap going on that day.

Speaker 1 (01:46)
Maybe it’s a Friday, whatever the case is, and they’re like, Hey, we ain’t got nothing going on. Rather than you guys just standing around and First Sergeant wanting to know what the hell you guys are up to, go chill out in your barrack’s room. Just have your phones available. So if I need you, I can give you a call and just go chill out, but stay hidden in your barrack’s room or something. And those days are pretty nice. Like I said, they don’t always happen. And it sometimes just depends on your MLS, your unit, whatever is going on at the time frame. But when it does happen, it was pretty nice. I always remember that was pretty cool. Sometimes just getting to chill out and just basically get a free day off, half day off, whatever the case was. Not to the full extent of having a day off where you can just go free and do whatever you want, but it was a fun day to be able just to maybe chill in the barrack’s room. Married people sometimes get sent home and just had to answer their phones. And if they needed you, then you need to come back or whatever the case was.

Speaker 1 (02:31)
Or sometimes they’d go chill out in the barrack’s room with one of the single soldiers they knew or something like that, play video games all day. And then if they needed you, then they’d give you a call or come knock on your door. Don’t count on that being an always thing. Occasionally happens here and there. But when it does happen, it’s pretty cool. And that was something I loved about being in the army. The second thing is the medical benefits. I’ve probably talked about it before in other videos, but it is very nice. You get hurt, you get injured, you get sick, whatever the case is, you can go get seen for free. But expanding beyond that for people to have families, it’s really nice. If you have a family and you want to have children, well, that’s basically free. You don’t have to go and pay for any doctor’s visits or anything like that. You can go and see the doctor on base with your spouse and everything like that. Even if your spouse will say, You’re in the army, you have a wife and you’re going to have a child with her, and she’s not in the army, she’s not in the military, she’s a civilian.

Speaker 1 (03:24)
But because you guys are married, all that stuff is taken care of. They can go on base and get all that taken care of. All the doctor visits, the birth, everything, no charge. That was one of the big things I remember people enjoyed was they were able to easily start families without having a huge medical bill or whatever, having to pay a lot for medical insurance to make sure everything’s covered. They were able to knock out several kids and be able to still have money because they’re not having to spend that money on the medical expenses, on the doctor’s visits, and everything else like that, because it was all taken care of through TR care, through their benefits of being in the military and being in the army. Other things, outside of that, I’ve known people that have gotten LASik surgery for free, certain other things. There’s a lot of things that I’ve known of people that have been able to take advantage of the medical system, to be able to take care of themselves, take care of their families and everything, and not have to pay for anything. Now, we got a few more to talk about, but before we do so, this video is sponsored by the Ridge Wallet.

Speaker 1 (04:18)
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Speaker 1 (05:01)
Com chaosarmy. And at checkout, make sure you use the promo code chaosarmy so you get 10 % off to include free shipping. So visit the link down in the description box. I also have a comment pinned to the top to check it out, to easily get to the website. Check it out, get yourself Ridge wallet. Let’s get back into these five things. Now, the third thing that you could potentially could love about being in the army is the benefits. There is a ton of benefits, things like education, loans, all sorts of things that you can benefit from either while you’re in or even when you get out. You can actually use education benefits while you’re in the army on active duty. It’s a little bit difficult, but there is ways that you can utilize that. I have known people where maybe they’ve been able to take a few classes here and there or something like that. Maybe there are online classes, whatever the case was, but have the army pay for that through their tuition assistance, and they’re able to pay for everything for them. They’re able to do maybe a couple of online classes, or maybe they had to reenlist for it.

Speaker 1 (05:53)
But even in that situation, you maybe get a whole semester of college and you get a little bit of break away from your army job to go do a semester at the local college and get some credit hours and everything like that and have the army pay for it. Other benefits, like when you get out or even while you’re still in, you can use the VA loan. It’s a little sketchy using while you’re still in because if you buy a house somewhere and then they decide to send you somewhere else, now you got to figure out what are you going to do with the house? You’re going to rent it out, you’re going to have someone stay in it. What are you going to do with it? You’re going to sell it. But whether you use it while you’re in the army or when you get out of the army, you have this nice VA benefit of being able to purchase a house where you’re able to get a loan. As long as you have mild, okay credit, they don’t care, they’re going to give you the best possible interest rate. With VA loans, it also makes it where you don’t have to put a down payment.

Speaker 1 (06:36)
Most civilian loans, pretty much all, if not, maybe require a certain percentage of a down payment on the house in order for you to get approved for the loan. You don’t have that with VA loans. Va loans are great for that, where you don’t have to put any money down for a deposit or down payment if you don’t want to. There are a lot of benefits that I’d mention, like I said, education and VA loans, but there’s a lot of other things, too. There’s a ton of benefits. Sometimes if you do your research, find out what all those benefits are and how you can utilize them to your advantage, that’s a great thing that maybe some people might love about being in the army, serving in the army, serving in the military even. The fourth thing is the experience. Maybe depending on your job type of thing, the experience you get that you can’t get on the civilian side. There are some civilian jobs that do have an equivalent into the army, right? And in order for you to do on the civilian side, they want you to have experience. They want you to have a college education.

Speaker 1 (07:24)
And before they even let you do that work and get that experience in that job where that’s not the case in the army. Some examples of that. There’s probably a lot of examples, but one example is IT field. Sometimes you have to have schooling and experience to do that before you even start to touch switches and networks and all sorts of things where in the army, you just jump right into it on the job training, and you get to get that experience firsthand right away without having to have prior experience. A lot of other jobs on the civilian side require prior experience or education for you to even get into that field where you don’t have that in the army. You get that experience in the job that you want, and now you can use that experience you got in the army to maybe go to the civilian side of it because now you have experience with it. Now, this other one, we’ll call it 4.1 or 4 alpha or something like that because it ties into it. But that is leadership or management type of experience you get in the army that you may not be able to get very easily on the civilian side.

Speaker 1 (08:16)
That is the thing that people love about being in the army is their opportunity to get that manager type experience, that leadership experience to take with them to the civilian side to show that, Hey, I can be a manager. I can be a leader in the civilian force. Because on the civilian side, you have individuals where they go and they spend 5, 10, 15, whatever amount of years at their job and just always are in the same position, can never get up to that manager experience thing because the manager that is already currently there has been there forever and until that person leaves, nobody can move up into that position. Where in the army, if you do the right thing, you’re getting promoted on time, 4, 5 years maybe, you’re now a sergeant and you’re probably like a team leader, a squad leader, a section sergeant. And that’s like being a manager. You have some people that you’re in charge of that you’re responsible for, and you get that type of leadership experience like you would as a manager. So people like that. They get that experience of being a manager type of thing or a leader type of thing to be able to use that on the civilian side where it would have taken them maybe much longer on the civilian job to get that type of experience to get into that level, into that position.

Speaker 1 (09:19)
Now, before we move into that fifth and final one, let’s go ahead and feed the YouTube algorithm. Make sure you comment down below. If you have a question about anything I’m covering or whatever, make sure you comment about that. But if not, let’s make sure to help out the algorithm by making a comment. I would like to hear about your favorite type of food. Me, I love hot wings, so what is your favorite type of food? For one of you lucky individuals, I might pick someone out of the comments that comments with their favorite type of food and hook you up with a gift card as long as you’re following me on Instagram. Make sure you’re also following me on Instagram and leave a comment with your favorite type of food. Maybe you can win a gift card to your favorite restaurant. Now let’s move on to the fifth and last one and that is vacation time. Commonly on the civilian side, you spend that first year maybe at your civilian employer before you even start earning vacation time. They want to make sure you’re not someone that’s just going to take advantage of that.

Speaker 1 (10:03)
Different employers may have different criteria as far as maybe six months, maybe 90 days, maybe a year before you even start accumulating any type of leave vacation time. The common one is usually like two weeks. After a year of saving up all of your vacation, you might get two weeks of vacation time. Maybe the longer you’re there, it starts to build up. Maybe it’s even less than that. It really just depends on the employer. In the army, from day one, when you come into the army, regardless of your rank, you’re going to earn 30 days. Now, you don’t get that until after you’ve been in the army for a year. But one year of not taking any vacation time will earn you 30 days of leave. Looking at it that way, that’s essentially four weeks of leave. Are you going to be able to take four weeks at a time? No, there’s only a few cases where you can maybe get to do that. But still, nonetheless, you’re building up basically four weeks of vacation per year where you’re not going to make that in the civilian side unless you’ve probably been in a corporation for a really long time.


Even then, I don’t know if there’s a lot of places that give you four weeks for a whole year of working and not taking vacation time. You’ll commonly maybe get to take a week or two out of time type of thing. There’s only a few rare cases I’ve seen where you’re able to actually take a whole entire month off. Some of those cases are people who are in an overseas assignment, not a deployment, but an overseas assignment where they’re stationed in Korea or Germany or something like that, and you get mid tour leave and they may allow you to take a full month off to go spend time with your family, then come back and finish off your tour. Other times I’ve seen it is you have maybe a soldier that their wife had a child or something, and they’re able to take 30 days off to be with their newborn child if they’re allowed to. I’ve seen a few cases like that. Outside of those, it’s probably pretty rare, but nonetheless, having 30 days of vacation time in an entire year, that’s pretty good. That’s a lot more than you probably earn in most, if not a lot, a ton of different civilian jobs.

Speaker 1 (11:49)
Now, the other downside of that is that, yes, if it’s a weekend, that still counts. Most employers, if you already had that day off, it doesn’t count towards your vacation time. In the army, it does. If you want to take the whole week off, that includes Saturday, Sunday, everything. Even if there’s a holiday in there, it still counts. You have to use leave day for that. But still, you still get earned a lot of vacation times. Even with that disadvantage of having to use vacation time to get a weekend off in the middle of that or a holiday or whatever type of thing. But nonetheless, 30 days is pretty darn good. Now, on that topic of vacation time, I did do a video a long time ago or a couple of years back that explains how vacation time works. And if you would like to see that, I got it right here available for you to check out. If you want to see my latest upload, I got it right here to continue reviewing and experience. The link’s down in the description box, which I highly recommend you give a look at. Hit that like button.

Speaker 1 (12:35)
Let’s see if we can get 50 % of the views or something like that to like this video. Thanks for hanging out. I’m Christopher chaos, and I’ll see you next time. See you.

George N.
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