What’s surprising was that you can’t/couldn’t contribute to an IRA since your pension may or may not ever happen, depending on how many years you end up in the military.
Oh, I see. I never had enough disposable income to really worry about that until I had about 15 years in. Luckily, that was in the mid-80s, when the stock market was taking off, so I invested a small amount of money with Fidelity. And I had been buying US Savings Bonds all along, albeit in small denominations.