The long answer is:
Like Inkstick said, the money actually isnt bad as a naval officer. As a submarine junior officer, you could be a 26- or 27-year-old Lieutenant taking home around $70,000 a year AFTER taxes, which comes to somewhere in the neighborhood of having a $85K salary. You dont see that for many other mid-to-late 20-somethings. If you stay in for a career, senior officers make a real decent paycheck, in addition to the full medical and other benefits that were mentioned, plus whatever bonuses or extra pay you might be entitled to.
I know a good many officers who have gotten out of active duty and pursued business. From my USNA classmates, in my Academy company alone (so, looking at a sample size of only approximately 30 people) folks have attended or are attending the following (and this is only the list of those Ive kept up with):
Yale School of Management, Northwesterns Kellogg School of Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business, MITs Sloan School of Management, Harvards Kennedy School of Government, and a Rhodes Scholar who went to Oxford University
(The last two arent business-specific, but it gives an idea that you can do whatever you want, really). Im confident that among those 30 people, there are other miscellaneous Masters degrees and MBAs that I just dont know about.
Im now in the Reserves, have one Masters degree that was mostly paid for by the GI Bill, and will start an MBA within the next few years - again, with a good chunk paid for by the remainder of my GI Bill. Im currently in a leadership development program with a $2B holding company responsible for multiple subsidiary companies, where of the 20-some folks that have gone through the program before me (all of whom are former military officers now in theirs 20s and 30s, at least half service academy grads), 3 are company presidents, at least 3 are company vice presidents, and many more are branch managers or operations managers - at least some of whom will be company executives eventually.
I know many USNA classmates who are in all different parts of business now, whether its in industry, sales, management consulting at top firms, or other leadership positions.
The short answer is:
Yes.
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