It depends on when you joined. Sometime after 9/11 college benefits in particular were beefed up. I forget the details, but my dad retired from the service aft

It depends on when you joined. Sometime after 9/11 college benefits in particular were beefed up. I forget the details, but my dad retired from the service after 20 years. I think he gets ~50% of his basic pay. I want to say it's inflation adjusted as well. Their salaries are low, so it's not exactly an amazing retirement. In a low COL state with Social Security it could be helpful assuming you've got everything paid off already. TriCare is a medical insurance component, but I don't know the details of how good it is. I think for us it was useful as it could sometimes be used as coinsurance, picking up what our other insurance did not. But I also vaguely recall having issues with it being accepted, though I was a kid and didn't pay much attention. All in all, you're definitely not joining the military to get rich, especially as an enlisted man.