What if I told you that you can run a full-time business you could go to school or
you could work at another full-time career all while still serving in the
United States Air Force in this video I'm going to share with you just how you
can do that in the Air Force Reserves I'm also gonna share the pros and cons
and the different types of programs in the Air Force Reserves and what you can
serve under if you're not familiar with the differences between the different
components such as Active-Duty, Air Force Reserves or the Air National Guard be
sure to watch my previous video that I filmed discussing those three different
types of components the main topic of this video will just be primarily on the
Air Force Reserves and exactly what I'm doing when I transition out of Active
Duty and for those of you that are interested in the Space Force be sure to
stick around to the end of this video and I'm gonna share with you something
really cool that we're releasing so now that you know what this video is about cue the intro!
so what is the Air Force Reserve the Air Force Reserves is a part-time
component of the United States Air Force and it also can turn into a full time if
you are on active duty orders the best thing about the Air Force Reserve
especially if you're active duty is that allows you to continue serving your
country and that it also gives you the opportunity to work in a civilian job or
if you run your own business or if you want to go back to school full-time you
can do it so one of the biggest differences about being active duty and
reserves it's gonna be your pay your benefits and obviously the amount of
time you work now I have discussed all of these differences between active duty
reserves and guard in the previous video and I'll link that again to the right
side of this video if you're interested in watching that first but yeah those
are the main differences between active duty and the reserves if you're
in the Air Force Reserves you're obviously not going to be working full
time unless you are on active duty orders so of course your pay is gonna be
a lot less than an active duty member but you'll still get to reap majority of
the benefits to active duty members get what are the benefits of being in the
reserves one of the biggest benefits in the Air Force Reserves that you now have
is time for your family and also time for yourself if you want to start your
own business you want to go to school or if you want to work another full time
career as a civilian another benefit in the Air Force Reserves is that you get a
hundred percent tuition just like an active duty member you get $4,500
per fiscal year for your tuition just like active duty and
you also get all of the on-the-job training that active-duty members get
when you are reporting in for duty Air Force Reserve members are also entitled
their GI bill once you have met the qualification period of how long you've
been in and that's another benefit that you have to take advantage of or you can
pass it to your family member because you're already getting your full tuition
through the Air Force Reserve another benefit of the Air Force Reserves it is
a supplemental income to your civilian job or business because it is only a
part-time job and you're only getting paid for the days you work it's not
gonna be a full-time income being in the Air Force Reserve so it's more of a
supplemental income to your civilian income you can put that into anything if
you want to put into stocks or savings or whatever whatever you want to do with
that you also have access to all the base installations you have access to
the BX the commissary you have access to low-cost TRICARE as well so you can
still have medical and dental insurance covered for you and your family at
a low cost I think something that's also so great about the reserves is the ability
to network even more than what you were doing in active duty I say this because
while you're doing your civilian job you're obviously making your connections
your networks in that position and then when you come in for your duty there's
so many other reservists that have civilian jobs that are reservists as
well that could be in a variety of different fields or industries and
that's a great opportunity to network with those individuals and you guys can
collaborate together and if you need something that I think that's one of the
greatest opportunities of the reserves is the networking opportunity if you
want to be in a different career field you can cross train out of your career
field much easier in the reserves compared to active duty what I'm trying
to cross-train into is combat camera combat camera essentially trains with
all the combat oriented career fields their primary duty is to document and
capture the mission that is going on with videography and photography what I
love doing and they're also trained on ground combat skills and they're able to
support the fight if they need to put that camera down and pick your weapon up
a lot of my friends in the reserves have told me that it's been so much easier in
the reserves to cross-train to go TDY to volunteer for deployments to go to
courses that you've always wanted to go to and these are the biggest reasons
why I want to go into the reserves as well because of the opportunities you
now have in the reserves you also have more freedom more flexibility and you're
able to choose where you want to serve so for example right now I'm in the
process of applying for vacancies throughout the world for an IMA position
and I'll discuss what the IMA program is later on in this video
but what it essentially does is that it allows you to apply for any unit with a
vacancy if they approve you you can move to that unit whereas active-duty you're
stuck on a four or six year tour if you're overseas or if you're stateside
you're stuck there for an indefinite amount of time and that is why I think
that's so cool about the reserves you you have more control over where you go
and you just have more control on your side of things whereas active-duty it's
more say okay you can put where you want to go but it's more of a like they call
it a dream sheet because it's not always guaranteed
that's one of the biggest things to as well that I like about the reserve in
the Air Force Reserves you are also still entitled to a 20-year retirement
plan with the DoD rolling out the blended retirement system that is
another video topic I will discuss in the future I did opt into the Blended
retirement system because I did not think I was gonna do a full 20 years on
active duty or the reserves at that time like I said I am in the Blended
Retirement System so when I hit my 20 year mark I still will be able to retire
from the Air Force Reserves but I won't have access to those funds until a later
date and I'll discuss that in the next topic that's one of the cons of the Air
Force Reserve another benefit about the Air Force Reserves is if you have been
prior active duty and you did leave active duty with service related medical
issues and you were given a VA rating you are able to still have a VA
disability paycheck a lot of people are confused with it saying that you can't
have a VA paycheck and be in the reserves I want to dispel that myth
immediately my in-service recruiter even verified this I've looked this up
on the VA website as well you can still get a VA disability paycheck as
long as you are not on active duty orders and as long as you are not on
your regular duty for the reserves so for example with the IMA program I'm doing
month out of the year during the one month out of the year i cannot receive
my VA disability paycheck so 11 out of the 12 months I can get my VA disability
pay check but that month I'm doing my IMA duty I'm not able to get a VA
disability paycheck because it's double dipping essentially you're getting two
paychecks from the government so that's something I'll post a link as well I'll
cite my sources there as well for those of you that are questioning it or don't
believe me I'll post a link there below that you can look it up as well it shows
the regulations and everything but that is one of the coolest thing about the
reserves that you can get your disability if you were prior active duty
too so those are the majority of the pros that I have found about the Air Force
Reserves and now you might be wondering okay what are some of the cons of the Air
Force Reserves the only two main cons that I've personally found is one is
your retirement so with active duty like I said earlier if you do a full 20 years
you get access to your pension to your retirement the day you retire at your 20
year mark so say I did 20 years in active duty when I retire and get out
everything's completed I get access to my full retirement a paycheck every month
whereas reserves you only get access to your retirement once you hit the age of
60 years old now you can bring that time down if you are on active duty orders
there's a whole different calculation how many days and months and years
they subtract from your total or if you go on deployments and stuff it
does bring that number down but you're still up in that high 50-60 you know age
limit that you can't access your funds until whereas if you joined the Air
Force at 18 years old like I did and I did a full 20 I'd be out at say 38 39 so
that's one of the biggest cons I guess the grass is always greener on the other side
and it is a double-edged sword yes I'm joining the reserves so that I can have
more freedom flexibility and be able to focus on my business goals and do a new
career that I'm ambitious about but at the same time you're kind of giving up
that full retirement at the age of 38 to 40 years old on average with everyone
else that joined at 18 so that's one of the negatives about being in the
reserves is the retirement age and not having that access to your paycheck second
thing I guess that is kind of a con of the reserves
I don't really it's not really a con to me because I mean you join the military
to serve and fight for your country but I guess it would be titled a con is if
you're a reservist you're obviously you have a full-time civilian career or you
might be running your business you can be involuntarily recalled whether you
like it or not even if you had your one month of tour scheduled for December
you can still be involuntarily recalled if there's a war or if there's any
conflict that the Commander-in-Chief ends up activating the reservists you will be
brought into active duty and you will be serving an x amount of time I honestly
can't tell you how long you would be on active duty orders it really depends on
the situation but that I guess is one negative or con of being in the reserves
that for me like I said I don't see it as a con because you still are
serving your country and you chose to still serve of course you're expected to
fight and serve your country if you're if you're ever called upon so I don't
really see that as a con but it's just listed on one of the cons for those are
out that really want to know what the real cons are so yeah those are the pros
and cons of the Air Force Reserves now you might be wondering what are some of
the programs under the Air Force Reserves that you can serve under so the
first one I want to get into is the traditional reservist that is the
traditional weekend warrior what people like to call it as I mean it is kind of a funny
term but it is kind of true you work one weekend a month you report in for duty
one weekend a month whatever unit you're at normally this would typically be a
stateside assignment and you would do your training your duty everything
training related or stuff you got to catch up on to stay qualified on you do
that during that timeframe and then you also have two weeks out of the year that
you would also have to report in as well for an annual tour that is traditional
service it's one weekend a month think of it weekend warrior and plus the two
weeks and the next one is IMA reserve program that's what I am doing
right now the great thing about the IMA reserve program is instead of reporting
in one weekend per month I'd rather serve the entire annual tour in one
month out of the whole year so that's the great thing about the IMA reserve
program is that you're able to serve 39 days consecutively so it's a little bit
more than a month but you get to do it all in one time crunch instead of
spreading it out and not everyone's job that they're gonna be in or business
they're running won't give them the time flexibility great thing about the IMA
Reserve program it allows you to have more flexibility to choose hey this is
the month I want to report in for duty of course upon agreement with your
unit as well and it will give you more of a window that hey okay I can expect every
year this is the month that I have my tour my duty that I got a I got to
commit to so makes it easier in my opinion if you're running a business or
if you have another full-time career compared to a traditional reservist
where you got to go in one weekend per month plus the two weeks out of the year
the cool thing about the IMA Reserve Program is that you can also be assigned
to units overseas and not just stateside with the traditional Reserve Program you
can only be assigned to a stateside assignment to my knowledge and to what
my in-recruiter told me so that's a cool thing abut the IMA program as well
the third program under the Air Force Reserve is the Air Reserve technician
program what this program is is you're essentially dual hatted so for example
picture an IT specialist say I am an IT specialist if I'm a GS employee and I'm
doing IT full-time Monday to Friday I'm doing that and I'm also doing it as my
reserve duty as a reservist during my one weekend every month plus my two
weeks out of the year that's a quick breakdown of what the Air Reserve
technician program is you're doing the same job in your full-time role as a GS
employee but you're also doing it as a reservist the fourth program is the PIRR
you know how the military loves our acronyms PIRR stands for
Participating Individual Ready Reserve Program
this program is a points only program and it's only for specific career
fields there are six career fields under the PIRR program that you can apply
for the first one is the Civil Air Patrol reserve program
the second is the air force admissions liaison officer program the third is the
chaplain service program the fourth is the Jag reinforcements designee program
fifth is the medical program and the six is the ready reinforcement personnel
section so that is the PIRR or personal individual Ready Reserve program it's
only available for six different career fields that you can apply under and
those are all the different programs under the Air Force Reserve that you can
serve under so as you can see there's so many different programs in the Air Force
Reserve that you can apply for and the sky's the limit honestly you have more
opportunities in the Air Force Reserve and the purpose of this video is not to
push people away from joining active duty or pulling people away that our
active duty that want to go reserves it's more so to educate those that are
not aware what the reserves has to offer cause I didn't even know the
reserves had all this to offer until I started looking into it on my way out
but yeah so to recap everything we went over the Air Force Reserve is a
part-time component of the Air Force that you can serve under as a part-time
role or even a full-time role if you are activated the Air Force Reserves has
several benefits being for example 100% tuition assistance you still get your
veterans assistance disability paycheck you get your access to the base the BX
commissary low-cost health insurance dental insurance so plenty of benefits
and then the different programs associated with the Air Force Reserve
such as the traditional reservist program
IMA reserve program air reserve technician program and the PIRR
program so I hope this video has really clarified to you what the Air Force
Reserve is and all of the pros and cons within the Air Force Reserve as well as
the different programs associated with the Air Force Reserve so that way you
have more options to apply for and not just be stuck with just the traditional
reservist because thats all that you would think that is in the reserves like I had
originally thought if you found this video helpful be sure to hit the like
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stuck around to the end of the video I did say in the beginning of the video
that would be unveiling something that we are
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it make sure you head over to the website link below as always don't
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see you in the next video peace!