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If you retired near a based do you feel you reap significant benefits from that? If not, do you feel you made a mistake? Is the base you retired near of the same service?
Any info/discussion on this topic would be fine.
We split out time between Alabama and Hawaii and are happy that we are near Military installations. On Oahu there are so many to choose from and Tripler is right there. We are near Redstone Arsenal so we have PX/Comm & a healthcare clinic for basic needs.
We are are near family in both locations; which is really nice after so long away, but I don't know if we could be comfortable away from an Military community.
Dad and a lot of other Army officers retired in Austin and at the time, there was Bergstrom AFB. Convenient but then Bergstrom bought it in the base closures. My parents stayed where they were, others (and widows) stayed, but I think others decided to move, perhaps closer to family, when the nearby base closed.
Looking at it as the child of a retired, one ought to ask themselves what is they are getting by retiring close to a base. Medical services? Well, two things. First of all, there is the changing of yes or no to whether they will allow retired and spouse in the hospital, nutshell speaking. Some eras yes, other eras no. Then there is the problem of one does not have the same doctor on each visit.......to say nothing about getting one's hands on them if they make a mistake.
Commissary and Exchange? Dad and Mom, when I had an ID card, would once in a great while sending me up to Ft. Hood with a station wagon to stock up on food stuffs...and those trips became less and less as years went on. I'm not one for Sam's Club but my parents were and with outfits like that around, does one really need access to the Exchange to live?
Banking services? Admittedly, my approach to banking has been to have a military bank and I have the same bank I had when I was in the Navy. When Army posts became closed posts sometime around before 9/11, there was a possibility of not being able to visit my bank.....but that really wasn't a concern since I had never stepped foot in it to begin with. Then when my bank got bought by a bigger bank with a branches in the civilian world through out Texas, that kind of access became a moot point.
Funerals? Perhaps but that aspect for my father was arranged by my retired Colonel brother, so I don't know what that involved.
As far as whether the same service, that was never much of a concern. I was an Army brat who lived at a time on Clark AFB, who went into the Navy. Wasn't much of a concern to me and I don't think it was much of a concern to my father.
BRAC'ing could be an issue but I'm not sure how much more of that remains to be done.
I currently still work on a base but won't retire here. Nowhere I'm interested in retiring currently is located near a base but I', wondering if it wouldn't be nice.
I don't use the BX but do save money at the commissary and money will be tighter in retirement. But the other benefits I use are fairly small. Using the legal office to do wills, well, how often do you do that? I do get my taxes done free by the volunteers since i absolutely hate doing them. Being able to use the gym is nice. I don't golf now but I suppose I might start. MWR rentals. I don't use the base pharmacy and am not sure if its cheaper but it might be. Many bases really don't have hospitals any more and those that do I don't think do much for retirees.
Not a LOT of benefits but some.
Is it worth it for retirees to deal with the changing picture of security*?
Three or four things. During the late Cold War, came across a letter to the editor asking what happened to their Navy, their country since they could no longer drive down to pier to witness America's might as they had been able to do when they were in. As my senior chief at the time pointed out, it was that laxness that gave us the Walkers. Well, that was then.....and now, the picture has changed a whole lot more.
Once, a retired Chief came bellowing into my station house with, "I WANT TO SEE OUNCE (that's me) OR MEDEWAY (my Chief of Police, a 1st class PO, at the time)!" The man was angered because my patrol had ticketed his car down at the exchange because he left is dog in time. If they know how much he loved his dogs, they would never have ticketed him, etc, etc... Now, it probably was not due to the fact that he was a retiree but just that he was probably like most of other Americans when a police officer has the gall to tell them that they are in the wrong.
But, on the other hand, he may not have been ready to encounter me......though I doubt that was the case since he came into the station yelling. But in another situation where I ran into a retiree at a sick bay, me in my winter working blues with a police radio on my hip and the mic clipped to my epaulet, he wanted to know if I was NIS (what NCIS was then). It was understandable since to someone from the past (and even at that time), what I was, a commissioned officer who wasn't a Chief (as he would have seen by the uniform), wasn't an LDO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_duty_officer
(as he would have seen by my age) would have been a mystery. So to him, just what could I have been?
One of the family friends is a retired Captain or Major of Infantry........and I'm glad I never had to deal with him in security for it would have been a painful battle .....that he would have eventually lost. He's under the stated opinion that there are some places in out in town not to have a DOD sticker visible so he had his mounted on a turnable plate under his Mercedes. Permissible perhaps now but not then and it would have resulted in the plate being seized on the spot. Needless to say, such a response doesn't make you friends.......but such are the regulations that are current that the active have to enforce.
So given that is probably out of the information circuit, given that the retiree probably doesn't even get the plan of the day, is it to their value to continue using the base/post/station?
*A quick lesson about USN "military police" in the late Cold War (don't know now) for the uninformed. Unlike the Army/AF, the Navy doesn't have an officer corps for military police. That function is essentially an enlisted rate, the one in direct charge is usually a Chief, and officers with those duties are usually, by common practice and expectation, out of the ranks. To be what I was, https://www.cool.navy.mil/usn/office...c2775_desc.htm
(very old link, it lists NCIS as NIS), one (as a simple commissioned officer) does not join that community; one gets assigned to the job to do it.
We've lived near a base since retirement - not by choice per sec but because my husband stayed on to work for the DoD after retirement. Where he works doesn't have much in the way of services but we've lived a couple places in San Diego county since his military retirement.
As far as the medical goes - it's been more of a curse than a blessing. My husband commutes a good distance for work and would prefer to chose a doctor that he could see close to his job....
We've had civilian primary care providers but anytime that we get referred to a specialist - Tricare overrides it and wants us to go to Pendleton or the hospital down at balboa.
Recently, my daughter got a referral to a specialist from her civilian pedi. Her dr is a couple miles from the house and the specialist he referred her to is in her dr's building. The specialist could also see her the next day... the referral goes thru and Tricare wants us to go to Pendleton which is close as the crow flies to our house but at least 1:15 in driving time each way. The Dr at Pendleton says they have to wait for the physical letter of referral and then it's ten days for the dr to look over the pedis notes and decide what sort of appt she needs. Ten days later, I can actually schedule the appt - and appts are booked for at least a month to a month and a half out.....
I know a lot of retired military folk like to use the military pharmacys but for us - we just suck up the copays on stuff we need right away at the local drugstore and order all the ongoing stuff from the mail service.
We do use military lodges and hotels quite a bit but that doesn't require living near a base obviously.
If you retired near a based do you feel you reap significant benefits from that? If not, do you feel you made a mistake? Is the base you retired near of the same service?
Any info/discussion on this topic would be fine.
I retired and then returned stateside to a home we owned in Connecticut. We stayed there for a few years. We were near Groton Subase and the Coast Guard Academy.
My wife got a job on-base for DECA.
Living near a base we were restricted to using on-base Mil-Med. Which was okay. For over 20 years we were treated by HM corpsmen, so it was not any different. Some times there are long waiting lines to be seen.
Five years later we moved to Maine. There is a NG reservist base here and they have a Commissary, so my Dw was able to transfer her job. Very few things are cheaper on-base here. Even though she works at the commissary we do most of our food shopping off-base, because it is cheaper.
Now that we are far removed from Mil-Med we go to civilian doctors. Tricare is accepted by everyone here. I have heard it called the most preferred insurance here. No more HMs, we are only seen by MDs or PAs. And they are quick to refer you to a MD specialist. Our medical care now is far above what we were able to get when we lived in Connecticut.
Our meds are all done via the mail-order pharmacy, so no co-pays.
I know that a lot of retirees like to gather around military bases. But for us, we have found that we like it much better to be further away. My Dw goes on-base now for her job. But otherwise the only other thing we use the base for is maybe replacement ID cards.
I retired and then returned stateside to a home we owned in Connecticut. We stayed there for a few years. We were near Groton Subase and the Coast Guard Academy.
My wife got a job on-base for DECA.
Living near a base we were restricted to using on-base Mil-Med. Which was okay. For over 20 years we were treated by HM corpsmen, so it was not any different. Some times there are long waiting lines to be seen.
Five years later we moved to Maine. There is a NG reservist base here and they have a Commissary, so my Dw was able to transfer her job. Very few things are cheaper on-base here. Even though she works at the commissary we do most of our food shopping off-base, because it is cheaper.
Now that we are far removed from Mil-Med we go to civilian doctors. Tricare is accepted by everyone here. I have heard it called the most preferred insurance here. No more HMs, we are only seen by MDs or PAs. And they are quick to refer you to a MD specialist. Our medical care now is far above what we were able to get when we lived in Connecticut.
Our meds are all done via the mail-order pharmacy, so no co-pays.
I know that a lot of retirees like to gather around military bases. But for us, we have found that we like it much better to be further away. My Dw goes on-base now for her job. But otherwise the only other thing we use the base for is maybe replacement ID cards.
That's been my experience as well - living near the base means being forced to go to the naval hospital which while we live close as the crow flies is very inconvenient for us....
That's been my experience as well - living near the base means being forced to go to the naval hospital which while we live close as the crow flies is very inconvenient for us....
I like being able to go into any hospital, any doctors office, anywhere, and to be treated by doctors who have college degrees and Medical School backgrounds. This is totally better than living near a base.
Tricare Prime here has a regional underwriter called Martins Point that administrates the process, and they make it seamless.
Having been a retiree near a military base and now 9 years away from military bases, I can not fathom any 'benefit' from living near one.
If there were some specific Recreational facility that you wanted, uh. MWR facilities are every where. There is a huge MWR facility near me now called 'Great Pond'. They are scattered all around the USA.
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