With the Army at least I guarantee it will be in writing. Your job and and incentives (which are hard to come by now) will all be in the contract.
But also realize that the Coast Guard is small and they don’t take everyone.
As others have said, it depends on what you want to do. Between active duty and the National Guard I have 25 years in the Army. I joke about wishing to have joined the Air Force but really I’m glad I decided to join the military instead. But each branch has its strengths and weaknesses.
But realize that this is not a particularly good time to join. All of the branches are either downsizing or keeping small. They will always need to put people in the pipeline but not nearly as much as they did before. And they are looking for excuses to kick people out that are currently in. Standards have been tightened. Signing bonuses are rare. At best only about 30% of those that walk into a recruiter are actually qualified to join. That is being tightened even more.
If you give more information as to what you are looking to do there are plenty of people here with experience that can help you with the pros and cons of each branch.
Oh, yes. Make the recruiter put everything into your contract. You can sign to a particular fort, but that has to be in writing, in your contract, and you won’t get an enlistment bonus, or anything, if you insist on something like that.
You can join the National Guard as well, and then apply for a full-time job (it’s the same process as applying for a civilian job, but you have to be in good standing, so you have to take a PT test, and possibly go for rifle qualification, and pass weight requirements). You get to pick where you live, and are a semi-civilian, albeit one subject to being mobilized like anyone in a reserve unit.
If you want civilian skills, be a mechanic or nurse, for example, and go where they send you. If you really want a military career, and you don’t want to be an officer, then choosing something like “clerk” is something every unit needs, so if you ever put in for a voluntary transfer, you have a good chance of getting it, and it’s still got some civilian applications.
If you want an education from the military, look again at ROTC. My father did his BA as Air Force ROTC, then two years active duty, two years inactive while he was in the Soviet Union going to the university of Leningrad (he was a military interpreter), and when he came back, he got his Ph.D while a captain in the reserves. He got money for school as well as his stipend.
Ex USAF guy here: Get a job that will make you money in the civilian world.
Seriously, that should be your primary goal as you are statistically unlikely to remain in the military for an entire career. And even if you do (less than 20% of those who join later retire from any branch) you’ll still find yourself a civilian again one day and if you have chosen a job which has few civilian counterparts (or none) you’ll have to start all over again in the job world.
That won’t be as easy when you are 39 (or older) as it is now.
Find a job that has future earnings potential and that you are qualified to to do and sign up for that. Do the very best that you can while you are be trained and then later when you get into the “real military.” Read all that you can about your career field and avail yourself of any and all training opportunities and additional education that you can while you are in.
Frankly, it really doesn’t matter what branch you join as the pay is same (you may not get combat pay in the Air Force in most positions) and so are the benefits when you leave. What matters (again) is being able transfer your training into a paying job or career once you leave the military.
20 year Navy retiree here. Loved every minute of it, except the parts I hated.
The key is knowing what you want to do, and looking at some of the non-traditional jobs in each service. Everyone knows that we have welders and painters and aircraft mechanics and pencil pushers. But did you know that the services have photographers and journalists and bands? Also IT specialists are in demand.
As you can see, there is plenty of representation from all of the services here, so throw out some ideas, and we can tell you about that field in our service.
By the way, here is a video about the first day of Navy boot camp. It hasn’t changed much in 22 years since I was at Great Lakes, except there were no female recruits there when i was a recruit.
I chose the military because I didn’t feel like I’d really done anything to prove myself. I chose the Marine Corps because I figured if I didn’t, I’d always wonder if I could have done it. Then I chose the infantry because I figured if I didn’t, ditto. I feel like if you have to ask, you don’t want to be a Marine. And probably not any kind of grunt.
In hindsight, that mebbe wasn’t the best career move.
Do NOT take a job in the military that does not provide training that directly correlates to and prepares you for a job in the real world…one that has at least as much potential as one that requires a 4-year degree or 4 years of training and experience.
Do something techy in the Air Force or Navy. One of my biggest regrets is not taking the chance to go in to the Air Force after I left the Marine Corps.
ETA: I have a relative who spent 4 years in Seabees and has a career as a machinery operator. That would have been fun, too.
I would pick the Air Force and often wish I had done so. I was in Air Force ROTC in college but I wasn’t on one of their scholarships so I could quit during the first two years and I did. That might have been a huge mistake. I didn’t experience anything all that difficult in the time I was in it and it was largely enjoyable. The Air Force environment is definitely military but the least militaristic of the bunch. You get to live on land and deal with some awesome technology even if you don’t fly yourself (most people in the Air Force don’t). The job skills tend to transfer over to the civilian world fairly well too.
If you give me a set of options and one of them includes living fairly safely and comfortably on a fairly cushy base somewhere and the others range from trudging through dangerous terrain in -10F - 110F weather or getting really cozy with 5,000 people on an aircraft carrier or 100 people on a submarine, I am always going to pick the former. That is just me though. Some people like their military as hard and gritty as they can get it.
My little brother is a Coast Guard Officer. It is fairly cushy too. His stations have been in Hawaii and Virginia so far but the training almost killed him (literally - he got an internal infection from what they put him through and ended up in ICU for two weeks and probably has permanent lung and heart damage from it). The Coast Guard doesn’t really have their own large bases so it creates an interesting dynamic. They share base services with the Navy and can go about their business largely unnoticed because it is a relatively small service. You still get all the benefits and perks that all the rest of them do though.
In my completely unfounded, inexperienced opinion, I’d go with the Air Force for the sole reason of being able to work in the aerospace industry (coughcoughastronautcoughcough). That said, I don’t know if that’s what you would like, which is what this comes down to.
A thousand times this. I know a lot of former military members that are now looking for employment - sure their resumes have a ton of fantastic infantry experience (leadership, attention to detail, all of that) BUT, nothing as far as a marketable trade/certification or anything that they can use towards a regular job.
You should choose what you want to do and then see which branch has that opportunity available. I can’t recommend enough to do the research on what MOS you want first.
To be fair, veterans have a tough time fitting in with some cultures. Employers talk a big game in terms of saying that they hire veterans but when it comes to deciding between a traditional candidate and a veteran, the patriotism gets toned down.
If you want to go home every day, work with a small, tightly knit group, go Coast Guard. I was Navy,(early 1970s) there were close to a thousand men on our ship, some draftees some enlisted. No way you could get to know them all. Looking back, if I had to do it again, I would go Coast Guard. IMHO
The breakdown I’ve heard: Join the Navy to see the world, join the Air Force for an education, join the Army to Be All You Can Be, and join the Marines to be a Marine.
