Retirees - When did you know it was time to hang up the uniform?

I am retiring next year - after 24 1/2 years in service.  It is time to give my boys stability (I'm a single mom) - stop the moving, the deployments, etc.  I have also become very disappointed in our leadership.

I'm not retired yet but if I can answer a little early. For me it was when I quit enjoying the work. I had a really bad assignment and I accepted one more, my current job, just so I would not retire with that bad taste in my mouth. But even being in a great job now, I'm not enjoying it. I'm burnt and ready to go home.

I loved my job and career choice for most of my years in, but it stopped being fun and enjoyable from all the PC changes and power shift from NCO to Soldier. NCOs lost the ability to be NCOs and the Soldiers became to ones that controlled how things were done from their power to make false accusations and ruin NCO/Officers careers. Had to constantly look over my shoulder and wonder if that junior enlisted I counseled or made the on the spot correction was going to accuse me of doing something I didn't and have that stigma go with me. And the PC changes made it next to impossible for the immediate leadership to get rid of a subpar soldier, instead of the NCOs word and a few counseling's, you need ten witnesses and 5 volumes of packet filler to put the dirt bag soldier out. No longer fun or productive to me and the good soldiers.

I was in a toxic unit, trying to recover from a toxic relationship. The ex got to some people in my unit that were more than willing to throw me to the wolves.
No loyalty, no sense of duty, no sense of honor. My years of service didn't matter, just the perception that I had screwed up this time.
Maybe it was just that unit, or maybe it is what the Army is becoming. Time to part ways.

I haven't retired yet, but I'm planning to after my next tour. To echo what so many of my fellow warriors have said, it's not fun anymore, and I'm ashamed to see that my Army has been infected by the same pathetic moral climate that plagues the nation at large. I want to get out before I'm forced to make a choice between the mission and doing what I know is right.

For me, it was a confluence of a bunch of things.

First, the knees were going bad and I couldn't keep up with the youngsters anymore. After years of falling out of "perfectly good" USAF airplanes and pounding the roads, they just stopped working like they used to.

Second, I had just come out of a 15 month tour in Iraq (2nd tour) and was looking at another in the very near future.

Third, I was stationed in Germany and my wife was in a PhD program that was causing her to have to travel back to the states a lot. It was both draining on her and a strain on us.

Lastly, I was at what I considered to be one of my best assignments I had ever had - I loved the unit, the mission, the people, and the location. But it was going to end soon and as I said before, I was staring down the barrel of another deployment.

Considering all of that, and having had one failed marriage due to the military (not blaming the Army, but it happened) we decided to get out while we were on top. It took almost a year of talking about it to finally make the decision, and once we submitted the packet, we spent the next six months debating whether we should pull it. It was a tough decision, but we made the decision together and I retired at 23.5 years.

I don't regret our decision, but I miss the old life every single day.

CW4 Beebe,

I can't say that it was any one factor. One kid in HS, another coming up, plus a potential PCS to Hawaii (lousy public schools) helped me make my decision. I knew deep down that it was time to go even though I had felt as if I had a few more good years left in me. It's best to leave when you're at the top of your game (not necessarily the top of the pay chart) and carry that over into your new career.

I knew when the Graham-Rudman Bill passed in '86.  I was at RAF Upper Heyford, and was told I was "indefinably and involuntarily extended".  No one could give me an estimate of when I could join my family back in the States, so I pulled the plug.  I really wanted to go back for a year or two to do some job hunting, but it all worked out.

For me the decision to retire came down to the point that I was burned out with being an Active Duty Career Counselor for 20-years. I still loved working with young Soldiers and opening their eys to life. I had a good CSM and 3-star Commander, it had more to do with the bureaucratic nonsense that made taking care of Soldiers difficult just because they could, that was with enlisted, officers, and civilians combined. Some people lose sight of the fact that the Big Army can suck-up a mistake far easier than an individual Soldier, especially those with families.