If someone has 10 years of National Guard service, but then goes Active Duty, how do they calculate their retirement?

CPT Lawrence Cable - Strictly speaking, what you refer to here is the "Non-Regular" retirement pension scheme. "Total number reserve retirement points X 2.5% X average of Highest 36 paid months / 360 = Retired Pay Multiplier" This isn't the method used to determine eligibility for the Non-Regular retirement, either, which is "20 federal, creditable, cumulative, service years in which 50 reserve retirement points are credited." Only after qualifying for a Non-Regular retirement is the RPM calculation relevant.

But that doesn't work to determine eligibility for a "Regular" retirement pension, toward which you must have a cumulative total of 20 years, to the day, of federal, creditable, active duty days. At which time, the old RPM calculator was "All years of active duty, plus all federally creditable reserve retirement points converted to months, with any partial months discarded X 2.5% X Highest 36 months average basic pay = RPM"

Of course, all of this is subject to modification if the retiree is eligible for Final Pay scheme from 1980 or before, Disability retirement with any amount of service, a REDUX retiree who took the CSB bonus, or now the BRS retirees, all of whom use different numbers in their calculations.

Cheers, WB

LtCol William Bentley - Sir, I think we are over complicating things a bit. If you have mixed Reserve, National Guard, and then Active Duty career, you get credit toward retirement for every active duty days whether they are Reserve or Active. So IET, AT's, any Federal Deployments or Active Duty Schools as a Reservist/NG count towards your 20. I understand that the Guard/Reserve retirement is set up differently as far as calculating good years.
What I think is confusing to everyone is that Retirement Points do count toward time for retirement pay even if you are active duty. So if you spent six years in the Guard, you should have earned a minimum of 63 IDT points a year (48 for drills plus 15 for membership), so you would pick up a bit better than a year for pay.

CPT Lawrence Cable actually it goes off your PEBD if you have an active duty retirement. Any time serving in the RC including the IRR will count toward the PEBD. So, as opposed to counting days and "good years", the time is counted from the day they signed into a "creditable for pay" assignment to the day they were discharged from it. This includes people who have an MOS and are automatically placed into the IRR, and people who join the USAR or ARNG and never show up for drills until they are discharged. Even if they're kicked out, they still receive credit for that time in an active duty retirement.

SFC (Join to see) - You are referring to the pay scale that is used in the final calculation of high three years, but that time doesn't all count toward a 20 year retirement . If I had went active and retired at 20 years, I would have retired with somewhere around 30 years of service for pay, but I still would have only received a standard 50 percent without the kicker I would have gotten for IDT retirement points.

Maybe there isn't a way to make mixed retirement simple:^).

How does Basic/AIT and Annual Training count? I would assume that counts toward AD Time? Right? So if I had almost a year at Basic and AIT would that time not count toward my years of AD time served? Plus the Annual Training time?

MAJ (Join to see) - yes. Pretty much all your active years will count towards your points if you get enough points 7300 then you would pretty much get an active duty military retirement. There is a calculator on the portal that will allow you put in your points and tell you when you can draw your retirement and how much it will be percentage of what active duty would receive. I've done a bit of research into this as I was active duty , then reserve now moving to guard and hoping to get an active guard slot.

Thank you very much!!! Good luck!

The most important thing to remember is that after you go Active, you need to get to 20 total years *Active* to qualify for the active retirement. The time at Basic and AIT, and all the time you spent on AT, and any stints of ADT or mobilization will all count towards your 20.