**British Armed Forces Discussion Thread**

From your pay isn't most of it yours? Providing you have no other financial commitments.

I'll be lucky in the fact im young (ish) free and single with only a phone bill. I'll be happy to live in the cheapest digs and whittle my pay away.
 
You'll pay food, accommodation, tax, NI and CILOCT (contribution in lieu of council tax). Tax and NI are at the rates you would expect, accommodation varies depending on the standard (almost nothing for awful accommodation) food is probably £100 or there abouts (not lived in for awhile), Ciloct is a few quid in the barracks. All deducted out of your pay before you see it.

So you don't have many overheads and if you blow it all first weekend, which many soldiers do you will still have a place to stay. Pay as you dine messes with your food bill but its not in all barracks.
 
Last edited:
So lets say I joined as an Officer, what would after going with provided accomodation etc would my take home be (if its a lot of hassle to work out please ignore).

Reason I ask is that I don't mind living on barebones for a few years to help save up a decent wad of cash which I would then invest in my business when coming out of the army.
 
Isn't there also additional pay to consider for certain skills? Like I remember when I looked into it a year ago and downloaded the .pdf from the army.mod.uk site it listed lots of extra stuff you can get payed for, like being a submariner, parachute trained, etc... some of which are skills anyone can pick up.
 
Officer cadet is 15.5k/year, 2lt is 24.5k/year before deductions. Officer pay is rubbish for the first few years especially with the life style cost of being an officer. Gets better from Captain onwards though.
 
The pay seems great once you get to Cpl.

Tbh from my position in life getting over £1000 a month is going to make me feel like a millionaire. I'm 23 and i've never been able to afford a car yet!

Got some catching up to do
 
lemonkettaz said:
I guess if your going for the Officer route getting a degree is probably essential in some cases

I guess it depends what your degree is as a lot of them are worthless in the real world anyway
Click to expand...
Not at all, its far more important that you've got some "common bloody sense" and life experience about you. You need GCSEs and A-Levels to apply for Sandhurst, not a degree.
 
Ive earned better money in the past , but with the tiny accomodation and food costs in the RAF im actually better off now than Ive ever been. Even as a lowly SAC :)
 
platypus I didn't mean that to be a bold statement :) I just meant it in some cases maybe having a degree will get you that edge.

Yeh I know that if you have nothing else about you the degree might as well be toilet paper
 
What sort of internet connection do you get in your barracks accomodation? another question I have is after phase 2 training is there still oppertunity to take courses (either during work hours or outside of work hours) in certain? or do you bassicaly get told what you need to learn and just send you off to learn it at a time of their choosing?
 
Dist said:
What sort of internet connection do you get in your barracks accomodation?
Click to expand...

Probably non, you may be allowed to get a phone line put in if the quartermaster allows it, new accommodation can be a pain as your not usually allowed to drill holes in walls. Some units make there own arrangements and put in wireless access points. Some communal area's like the bars and shops may have internet terminals or wireless access as well.

As for courses, if your unit needs you to for example learn to drive an armoured vehicle then it will train you in army time, obviously you can't drive armour before you can drive a car, so they'd send you off for your cat B license first.
If you want to learn about something non job specific you can go to the army education centre and grab a course there, but you'll probably have to fit it around your primary job.
If you want to do an army course thats got nothing to do with your job then your probably going to be refused as places on that course will go to the soldiers who need that skill.

Adventure training courses can be good, if you can get enough of them you'll get taken by other units to instruct for them and could find yourself doing 6 month adventure training stints in places like the rockies and belize - or falklands :(
 
Dist said:
What sort of internet connection do you get in your barracks accomodation?
Click to expand...
when you get to your unit, most barracks these days there will be some sort of connection available, but the quality of connection can be patchy at best.
here there is wifi round most of camp and cable connection available in the new SLAM accomodation, there is also the opertunity if you wish to have sky/BT broadband etc.
cant say this will be the case in all camps, but its definitly becoming more common these days.
as far as training establishments are concerned, no deal.
if you want internet you have to either have a mobile internet dongle if you are lucky enough to have a strong enough signal or go down the naffi and use the computers down there which more than likely will cost a small amount each time you use them
 
In the RAF once you have passed out of training etc you ARE allowed broadband in your room via phone line. (You can pay BT to install a phone line if one isn't already there)

HOWEVER, since most of the camps are in the middle of nowhere expect speeds of around 1mb.
 
Andr3w said:
In the RAF once you have passed out of training etc you ARE allowed broadband in your room via phone line. (You can pay BT to install a phone line if one isn't already there)

HOWEVER, since most of the camps are in the middle of nowhere expect speeds of around 1mb.
Click to expand...

Get 1Mb peak here. 8Mb off peak.

Crazy!!

Also found out today, after a bit of investigating. The Armed Forces do not do the cycle scheme, disappointing.
 
With the forces this year I have been skiing to Andorra (cost me just £50!), Germany for 2 months on course, skiing to Bavaria next year (probably another £50) and just today I found out I'm off to the States for a month on another course :cool: ...I thought it was about time I got some gucci trips after all the sandy time I put in, 2010 has summed up to be a rather good year :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom