Salary
Average Salary: $90,000
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $3,757,320
As a commander in the Navy, you’ll certainly make enough money to live – especially since you don’t have much of a life to pay for. A cheap apartment for the couple days or months you crawl ashore? A handful of meals you’ll need on land?
Pay grades for commanders are listed at the O-5 level, which means you’ll receive a monthly basic pay salary from the military starting at roughly 5k per month. This number goes up dramatically the more years you serve. Though you start out at 5k per month (60k annually), you can be making 7k per month after 14 years of service and almost twice your starting salary ($8,500 per month) after 40 years on the job.
As a special sub commander, you’re also entitled to what’s called a “Submarine Duty Incentive Pay.” This amounts to an extra 600 to 800 bucks per month in exchange for your willingness to stay in an underwater hellhole (aaahhh… trade-offs). Speaking of which, you can also pick up additional monthly allowance pays – to the tune of $2500 per month – for food, “family separation,” “hazardous duty” and “hostile fire.”
Bottom line: subjecting yourself to hazardous working conditions really does pay off. That’s 30k in addition to 60k in basic pay. And that’s just your first year’s starting salary. So you have to ask yourself, can your health and safety be bought? That’s for you to answer.