Informed Decision

The title is the name of a class that I 'had'(read: I was forced to go and would have gotten into trouble for not attending) to go sit through on Wednesday. The upper eschelons of the units here on base round up all the first term folks(meaning we are on our first contract with the military) who are about a year out from getting out of the military, and make us sit through all these briefings on how much money you won't make on the outside, how you won't be trained properly to stay in whatever job you get, etc, etc. It goes on and on. There was even a guy who comes in sporting a suit, tie, cuff links and a briefcase, and gives us this whole schpeel about how he's done the research(which, once he got into explaining things, was more like uneducated estimates) and has compiled all of these figures as to how much it's going to cost, per month, for a single person to get out of the military and live in the local area.......His definition of 'research' must be something along the lines of guessing the prices from 10-15 years ago, because he was WAAAAYYYYY off on anything he was stating as 'fact'. Such as he estimated that a single male, under 25, was going to be able to pay a car payment, pay for full coverage insurance and put gas in it for $400. Yeeeaaaaa..........under 25 and that cheap of full coverage insurance. Not bloody likely.
So anyways, they want to 'show' you what you're up against outside the miiltary, in the hopes that it will convince you(without them saying anything outright) to reenlist.......The general consensus of everyone that had said they were getting out??? Still getting out, they don't want to deploy anymore.....can't blame the reasoning, personally.

So the countdown is 318 days until my seperation day.........