Understanding Military Retirement Pay

The military retirement pay system used to be easy to understand: You put in 20 years, and you got 50 percent of your base pay immediately upon retirement. You put in more than 20 years and you got 2.5 percent more for each year of active duty after 20 years (up to 75 percent).

During the draw-down of the mid-90s, Congress decided military retirement pay was too simple, and decided to complicate it.