If someone has 10 years of National Guard service, but then goes Active Duty, how do they calculate their retirement?

CPT Lawrence Cable - Strictly speaking, what you refer to here is the "Non-Regular" retirement pension scheme. "Total number reserve retirement points X 2.5% X average of Highest 36 paid months / 360 = Retired Pay Multiplier" This isn't the method used to determine eligibility for the Non-Regular retirement, either, which is "20 federal, creditable, cumulative, service years in which 50 reserve retirement points are credited." Only after qualifying for a Non-Regular retirement is the RPM calculation relevant.

But that doesn't work to determine eligibility for a "Regular" retirement pension, toward which you must have a cumulative total of 20 years, to the day, of federal, creditable, active duty days. At which time, the old RPM calculator was "All years of active duty, plus all federally creditable reserve retirement points converted to months, with any partial months discarded X 2.5% X Highest 36 months average basic pay = RPM"

Of course, all of this is subject to modification if the retiree is eligible for Final Pay scheme from 1980 or before, Disability retirement with any amount of service, a REDUX retiree who took the CSB bonus, or now the BRS retirees, all of whom use different numbers in their calculations.

Cheers, WB

LtCol William Bentley - Sir, I think we are over complicating things a bit. If you have mixed Reserve, National Guard, and then Active Duty career, you get credit toward retirement for every active duty days whether they are Reserve or Active. So IET, AT's, any Federal Deployments or Active Duty Schools as a Reservist/NG count towards your 20. I understand that the Guard/Reserve retirement is set up differently as far as calculating good years.
What I think is confusing to everyone is that Retirement Points do count toward time for retirement pay even if you are active duty. So if you spent six years in the Guard, you should have earned a minimum of 63 IDT points a year (48 for drills plus 15 for membership), so you would pick up a bit better than a year for pay.

CPT Lawrence Cable actually it goes off your PEBD if you have an active duty retirement. Any time serving in the RC including the IRR will count toward the PEBD. So, as opposed to counting days and "good years", the time is counted from the day they signed into a "creditable for pay" assignment to the day they were discharged from it. This includes people who have an MOS and are automatically placed into the IRR, and people who join the USAR or ARNG and never show up for drills until they are discharged. Even if they're kicked out, they still receive credit for that time in an active duty retirement.

SFC (Join to see) - You are referring to the pay scale that is used in the final calculation of high three years, but that time doesn't all count toward a 20 year retirement . If I had went active and retired at 20 years, I would have retired with somewhere around 30 years of service for pay, but I still would have only received a standard 50 percent without the kicker I would have gotten for IDT retirement points.

Maybe there isn't a way to make mixed retirement simple:^).

They should only credit you -- for active service purposes to qualify for a regular pension (the 20+ year active duty version) -- with a day for day count of your Federal active service. All those days (let's say 4 years), added up count to achieve an active duty pension.

All the "reserve retirement points" that were NOT active service days, i.e., your reserve drill weekends, correspondence points, 15 membership points per year, etc., THOSE points cannot count as active duty...because they are not.

They CAN and SHOULD count toward your eventual retired pay, either in the normal reserve way, or AFTER qualifying for a regular pension with 20+ cumulative years (7300 days of active duty) those reserve points ("Inactive Duty points") will be added to your total Active points to determine your final Retired Pay Multiplier, which is the combined total of all creditable active and inactive points...

And of course, all your creditable reserve service since the first day of basic training should count toward longevity for pay purposes, even if you only had 4 years of active duty and 12 years total longevity for pay...

I knew of a LtCol who retired with 20 years of active service, but because he had been a reservist for many years, he had served closer to 30 total years (and was paid with nearly 30 years toward longevity), even though he barely made it to an active duty pension.
And when he retired, all his reserve/inactive points came back into play, adding to his retired pay multiplier, something like an extra year and a half of points (which equals 1.5 years more service for retired pay purposes)...Cheers,

I am not bright enough to understand all that. lol LtCol William Bentley

MAJ Ken Landgren - Indeed, sadly, most reserves don't understand their pension plan either...and that was pre-BRS which now changed the old calculations AND added mandatory and voluntary contributions to their TSP plan as part of their total retirement package...financial literacy was supposed to become mandatory training with the implementation of the BRS retirement plan, but it was already hard enough to include all the required training in 48 drills periods and 2 weeks in a year...heck, even the Regulars have a hard time getting all their mandatory training done, and they have all year, 245/7/365 to get it done!

In fact, I suspect that the majority of Regulars could not adequately explain their own pension plan, even pre-BRS, and now with BRS I expect that the VAST majority cannot explain how it all works.

The days of saying "50% at 20 years, that's all I know" are gone...more complicated than that.

Cheers, WB

LtCol William Bentley - We add to the confusion with an array of mutual funds, Roth vs Traditional, rate of returns, risk and reward, and when the funds are available without penalties.

How does Basic/AIT and Annual Training count? I would assume that counts toward AD Time? Right? So if I had almost a year at Basic and AIT would that time not count toward my years of AD time served? Plus the Annual Training time?

MAJ (Join to see) - yes. Pretty much all your active years will count towards your points if you get enough points 7300 then you would pretty much get an active duty military retirement. There is a calculator on the portal that will allow you put in your points and tell you when you can draw your retirement and how much it will be percentage of what active duty would receive. I've done a bit of research into this as I was active duty , then reserve now moving to guard and hoping to get an active guard slot.

Thank you very much!!! Good luck!

The most important thing to remember is that after you go Active, you need to get to 20 total years *Active* to qualify for the active retirement. The time at Basic and AIT, and all the time you spent on AT, and any stints of ADT or mobilization will all count towards your 20.