Back in the Day (Payday Edition)

Joe will be retiring from the Navy in a few months, with 30 years of service.  Over the past 30 years, Joe has stashed away random and various mementos in a very old antique trunk.  He just kept adding to it, and finally decided it was time to go through the trunk to retrieve some items to use for his retirement shadow box.

There were piles and piles of old patches, ball caps, awards, medals, foreign money, and random papers.  It was amazing to see some of that stuff.  

He kept one of his very first Leave and Earnings Statements (pay stubs).  

 Joe enlisted into the Navy back in 1982, and left for boot camp in 1983.  He's old, isn't he?  I need to point out I was only 12 back then.  You know, just so you know I'm not nearly as old as he is.  And he started out allllll the way down at the bottom of the food chain as an E1.  Matter of fact, I think he was an E1 a couple of times due to some disciplinary infractions.  He was a little rough around the edges when he first joined the Navy.  Imagine that...

And this is the best part.  If you look over in the red boxes on the right, you can see how much money he actually grossed back then.  $631.27.  PER MONTH.  Yes, that's his monthly gross salary.  Right underneath that number is the whopping $228.00 he actually netted in a two-week pay period.  Yes, that's right.  30 years ago as an E1, he netted $456.00 per month.

See his "daily norm"?  $15.25 dollars per day.

The Navy was different back in those days.  If I had kept one of my first Leave and Earnings Statements it would read about 200 dollars more per month than his.  But people didn't join the military for the money.  Joe needed to get out of the place he was in because he didn't want to get into serious trouble like his friends.  I wanted to go on a ship, I wanted to travel all over the world.  I wanted to see new things and be on the ocean.  And I sure got my wish.  In the first two years I served I had the opportunity to go to over 20 different countries.   And clearly it panned out for Joe.  It was HARD work.  And sometimes it was absolute misery.

And clearly we weren't in it for the money!