XBoxMarine
05-28-08, 05:49 PM
I'll try to make a long story short and easy on the eyes. I bolded my actual question so no one really has to read this entire post to see where I'm going with it.
I'm 22 years old, married, have a son, and another son is on the way. Besides my reserve duty I've been supporting my family with a number of poor paying jobs with no decent benefits. I decided to look into law enforcement and just got accepted into the best criminal justice academy in my region; I have been told by many friends of family who are in law enforcement that I will be a shoe in.
So I'm looking at complete financial security with a starting pay that doubles what my wife and I make together in a year. She'll be able to leave her job, go to college herself and spend more time with the kids. I'll finally have a job that I enjoy and keeps me in good shape.
My guarantees for success laid out before me, and finally having a career after 5 years of being on my own... but there's a down side...
Because of budget constraints, funding was cut to the trainee program, in other words I have to pay for the academy myself and I will not be paid to attend it... This is no problem as I have a few thousand dollars in savings that I had set aside for emergencies. I have paid rent for the next six months that I'm in the academy, I set some aside for the actual post-academy hiring process, and budgeted the rest for my wife and I to live off of. Things will be tight, but it will be OK in the end.
My problem is, I have my AT coming up; I talked to my Plt Sgt and training NCO about the issue, they got me out of going across the US and managed to land me an at-home AT; however, even "at-home" this takes me away from the academy long enough to drop me to the next class. My academy will end right at the end of this fiscal year, so there's no way I can delay the AT until afterwards. As a reservist I don't think any temporary leaves will apply to me, though I'm not sure. All of that said... you can see what's at stake. Does anyone have an idea what I should do?
I'm 22 years old, married, have a son, and another son is on the way. Besides my reserve duty I've been supporting my family with a number of poor paying jobs with no decent benefits. I decided to look into law enforcement and just got accepted into the best criminal justice academy in my region; I have been told by many friends of family who are in law enforcement that I will be a shoe in.
So I'm looking at complete financial security with a starting pay that doubles what my wife and I make together in a year. She'll be able to leave her job, go to college herself and spend more time with the kids. I'll finally have a job that I enjoy and keeps me in good shape.
My guarantees for success laid out before me, and finally having a career after 5 years of being on my own... but there's a down side...
Because of budget constraints, funding was cut to the trainee program, in other words I have to pay for the academy myself and I will not be paid to attend it... This is no problem as I have a few thousand dollars in savings that I had set aside for emergencies. I have paid rent for the next six months that I'm in the academy, I set some aside for the actual post-academy hiring process, and budgeted the rest for my wife and I to live off of. Things will be tight, but it will be OK in the end.
My problem is, I have my AT coming up; I talked to my Plt Sgt and training NCO about the issue, they got me out of going across the US and managed to land me an at-home AT; however, even "at-home" this takes me away from the academy long enough to drop me to the next class. My academy will end right at the end of this fiscal year, so there's no way I can delay the AT until afterwards. As a reservist I don't think any temporary leaves will apply to me, though I'm not sure. All of that said... you can see what's at stake. Does anyone have an idea what I should do?