Dear Subpar Group - How Should I Spend My Bonus
Dear Subpar Group,
I recently passed my Admiral interview and will commission as a submarine officer this spring! Did you know the bonus was recently increased raised to $30,000! Any advice on how to best put my bonus to use?
Very Respectfully,
MIDN 1/C Excited to be a Submariner
Dear MIDN 1/C Excited to be a Submariner,
Congratulations on your acceptance to the submarine community. We will follow your career with great interest. First, you need to study on your SUB I.C.
Second, we recommend you use your bonus to make your life suck less as a JO.
What complaints do JOs have about their sea tour? Thin watch bills for in port duty, unreliable underway schedules, and poor leadership to name a few – but it’s not within our power to correct those issues. Let’s figure out how to cope.
You likely won’t be able to fix the in-port duty schedule. We’ve all tried to get our DHs to stand just one extra day a month (please sir, it would be incredibly helpful) but you’re on your own. And good luck getting your skittish, risk-averse ENG to qualify the new guys, so unless you have a really really broke JO in your wardroom who you can pay to stand your duty days, you’ll need to focus on how to stop the bleeding.
What you need to do is figure out how to maximize your “free time.” You aren’t going to have a lot of it, but you still need to do laundry/meal prep/work out/catch up on sleep/clean your house/clean your car/mow your lawn/go on a date/read a book/watch a movie/play video games/see your family/maybe relax for like 5 minutes/maybe even do something fun for a change, so you’re going to need to outsource.
Our recommendation is to hire someone to take out your significant other, call your mom, wash your TYPE IIIs three times to get the amine smell down to “less repulsive” and catch up on Yellowstone so that you can focus on more important things.
Make sure whomever you hire is free on weekends to take out your SO when you have duty. If you don’t have a significant other make sure they can be trusted to swipe right and comment, “Oh you go crazy for Margaritas? That’s so crazy, me too hahaha winky emoji” for you when you have a critique scheduled for 1800 and can’t get topside to your phone.
(Newsflash: that critique is going to result in someone being removed from watch so get ready to go port and starboard and continue outsourcing your book progress).
Though anticipated, every submariner has felt the keen sting of canceled plans after getting the news that their deployment has been extended. As everyone scrambles to one of the three working unclass computers (two of which are in chief’s quarters) to send an apology email home during the last PD trip for two weeks, you can sit back and relax knowing that you are covered. Luckily, you have a cushion from your signing bonus!
Did your command only give you a 72-hour heads up that you can take leave? No fear, you have plenty of extra cash to buy that exorbitant last-minute flight to literally anywhere but your duty station. Treat yourself to economy plus. Finally get there and your XO calls you back because the new kid got removed from watch and the other guy can’t go port/re-port? Don’t stress, you have plenty of money to get the rental car, buy energy drinks, and drive through the night to get there in time for turnover. Money well spent.
As for the poor leadership – there’s not much you can do. Make sure to budget so that after outsourcing and making/canceling travel plans you’ll have enough money left over for therapy.
Remember: you shouldn’t use this money to make investments, pay back loans, put a down payment on a house, or set yourself up for success long-term. The Navy offers you this bonus as a bare-minimum attempt to make your day-to-day life suck less when your detailer extends your tour to 42 months. There’s plenty of time on the back end for the submarine force to entice you into more tours with more bonuses.
This is not to say you’re not deserving of a $30k bonus; if anything, your time and commitment is worth far more. Do whatever you want that’ll make you happy/more prepared for the future/give you some cushion to live your life when you can. Do we think it’ll solve all of our retention issues? No, but it’s nice to know the Navy is willing to spend some money in an effort to fix it, no matter the direction.
V/r,
The Subpar Group’s Financial Representative
You do realize that $30K is more than the sum total of my earnings in 2 years as an ensign. But the flip side is that my ensign pay in those days was 14% higher in purchasing power than this fellow will be getting because COLA lags inflation, an effect compounded every year. Nukes do the math..
In those days the first bonus came at NPTU completion in the amount of $1500. We finished in Idaho on 30 December 1978 and REDACTED [one colleague] had plans to head south to Vegas and 'invest' his after tax haul in the New Year's Bowl games. Fast forward to Groton where he informs us he lost all 8 of them! But he was upbeat about it all, figuring 4 months at Sub School was plenty of time to get it back at the Indian tribe's greyhound track nearby.